At 18, he fell into gaming entrepreneurship by chance

by Derek Rodriguez / Photos by Winston Ng

Like many children in primary school, Winston Ng filled his afternoons playing video games and Lego. But he didn’t stop there.

“I loved playing games, but I wanted to know how they were created. I would trawl through YouTube for game-making videos and even picked up coding to try and develop my own games,” he recalls.  

At nine, he made his first Lego stop-motion film.

Though his interests have evolved, the curious kid in him lives on.

The 24-year-old NTU business student now builds interactive virtual worlds where players can experience Basic Military Training, join the police academy or drive a bus through a digital Singapore.

His startup, Finute, has teamed up with government agencies to turn public education into something more playful. Its digital recreation of the Home Team Academy, Mata-verse, on online gaming platform Roblox has reached more than four million players, and its Singapore-themed game Singverse has drawn more than three million.

Yet, becoming a business owner was never part of Winston’s plan.

"I remember I was stuck in my bedroom with a laptop during the pandemic, and I thought, why not start a business?"

–  Winston

Patrol the roads in a realistic police car in Mata-verse.

New game+

As a secondary school student, he had imagined himself getting a diploma in IT and working in a “comfy tech job” in the future. “I didn’t know anything about business. Just games and tech,” he says.

Then, things took an unexpected turn. His plans to enrol in a polytechnic fell through and he instead entered Millennia Institute.

As fate would have it, it was the only A-level school that offered business subjects, which sparked his interest in entrepreneurship. Later, he even became president of its entrepreneurship club.

More pieces fell into place when he joined – and won – a hackathon. The organisers, a financial services company, were so impressed by his team’s idea that they commissioned them to build a financial literacy game.

The team eventually developed an app to help young adults make smarter financial decisions through interactive saving and investing games.

“We were surprised that a big firm liked what we did so much. We were just teenagers,” says Winston. “Compared to other entrepreneurs, I had a lucky start because I got a client on my first day.”

Rather than pocketing the earnings, Winston and his team ploughed it back into their fledgling company.

“I remember I was stuck in my bedroom with a laptop during the pandemic, and I thought, why not start a business?” he says.

“Attending online lessons was mundane. I wanted to make education more fun. That’s why I founded Finute to develop gamified solutions.”

The rising metaverse star

In 2021, as COVID-19 restrictions led to scaled-down National Day celebrations, Finute created an open-world game to simulate the National Day Parade. The app quickly rose to the top of the App Store. Similar projects over the next three years drew more than 200,000 players.

Though the pandemic put paid to big National Day celebrations, Winston and his team made a mobile game app that let people experience segments such as the state flag flypast, the mobile column and a sing-along segment featuring that year’s theme song.

With a growing reputation as a metaverse expert, Winston was even invited to give a talk to a class of master’s students at the National University of Singapore.

That year, he created an AI tool that could generate virtual replicas of buildings. He used it to create a Singapore metaverse. Refined over the years, the tool now helps his team of five build Finute’s digital worlds.

Winston with his mentor at Nanyang Business School, Adjunct Assoc Prof Richard Koh, founder of a fintech startup. The two hit it off over their shared hobbies, similar educational paths and experiences of starting gaming companies at a young age.

The next stage  

As a “tech guy”, Winston is looking forward to spending a full year at the University of California, Berkeley, as part of the Nanyang Business School Global Leaders Programme.

“It’s very near Silicon Valley, so I hope to make some friends in the startup community while I’m there,” says the second-year undergrad.

Naturally, he has also built a 3D replica of NTU that anyone can use for wayfinding or just to roam around in.

Who knows, the virtual tour might bring some players into the real campus one day – as students enrolled in the University. Especially if they share Winston’s first impression of the business school’s building, the largest wooden building in Asia.

“As someone who makes buildings in virtual games, I had a ‘wow’ moment when I saw it for the first time,” he says. “Creating this is the least I can do to give back to NTU.”

Winston’s 3D map of NTU includes navigation within and between buildings and has detailed wayfinding, down to which lift or staircase to take.