Australia’s Game Development Renaissance

To the casual observer, game development in Australia would appear to be a shadow of its former self. Where once the country had many medium to large scale studios producing games for PC and console, very few now remain. Pandemic? Bluetongue? Team Bondi? Visceral Melbourne? THQ Studio Australia? All gone. And then there’s Krome, which was once the country’s largest development house with 400 staff across three studios at its peak. Several rounds of lay-offs preceded the operation almost shutting its doors entirely. It’s now a fraction of its former size. (Get the inside story here.)

The last five or so years have been tough for the ‘traditional’ development system: those studios working on console games and boxed product. The good news, however, is that rapid changes to the gaming landscape have brought with them plenty of opportunities, and several Aussie devs have seized those opportunities with both hands. Australia’s most famous development houses are now the primarily mobile-focused studios that have risen to prominence alongside the iPhone and App Store.

After years of working on GBA, PlayStation Minis and XBL Indie titles, Halfbrick has hit its stride on iOS. Its best known game Fruit Ninja, however, is far from a one-hit wonder. Age of Zombies, Jetpack Joyride and XBLA title Raskulls are just a few quality titles the studio has released in the last couple of years. Firemint and IronMonkey – recently merged to form Firemonkeys – also helped put Australia on the mobile development map: Firemint with Flight Control and the Real Racing games; IronMonkey with a succession of solid mobile titles based on big EA properties like Dead Space and Mass Effect. Firemonkeys, in fact, is now Australia’s largest studio, which says a lot about the fundamental shifts that have occurred within the industry.

Real Racing 3: coming soon from Firemonkeys.

Only a few years ago, the reality of game development in Australia was that it was largely a ‘service for hire’ industry. In other words, local studios fought for game development contracts from overseas publishers. Most of the time this was for licensed titles (Hellboy: The Science of Evil, MegaMind: Ultimate Showdown), ports (The Force Unleashed on Wii) or working with someone else’s franchise (Viva Pinata: Party Animals).

This is not a stable way to maintain an industry, because it’s largely about competing on price and is especially subject to the vagaries of the market. Three factors in particular had a huge impact on Australia’s attractiveness for this kind of development. The first was a strengthening Aussie dollar, which made the country more and more expensive. The second was emerging development centres with more affordable labour, either because of location (South-east Asia) or government support (Canada). This brings us neatly to the third factor – a lack of willingness by the government to promote Australia as a development hub through incentives for the industry. Whether that would have been a good thing in the long run is certainly debatable, but there’s no doubt it played a part in the collapse of the industry.

Of course, outside Australia, the industry as a whole has experienced some of the most turbulent times in its history, rocked by financial crises’ and shifts in the very bedrock of the gaming business. Numerous studios around the world have suffered redundancies and closures. Australia, however, has copped it pretty badly.

The collapse of so many studios may prove less destructive to the long-term health of Australian game development than you might imagine. The industry is now focused on new platforms that have experienced explosive growth – iOS, Android and to a lesser extent, Steam. And the barrier to entry on these emerging marketplaces is just so much lower: almost anyone with the drive can create and publish a game.

The established studios working in the mobile space, such as Halfbrick and Firemonkeys, are just the tip of the iceberg. Across Australia, dozens of small teams are making games. Primarily for mobile, but also for social, PC and other platforms. They’re creating their own intellectual property (IP) and self-publishing their titles. They’re able to experiment, and showcase their talent and creativity. This independent scene is thriving.

“In 2009,” says Epona Schweer, the head of the Sydney chapter of the Independent Game Developers Association (IGDA), “we had something like four or five independent studios, and last time I counted we now have 27 independent studios who are releasing games… based in Sydney.” For a city that’s not generally regarded as a development hub, that’s a pretty huge number.

Melbourne is booming too. “It’s an amazing scene,” says Chris Wright, founder of Surprise Attack, a marketing agency focused on the indie scene. “Australia’s probably one of the most active places for the IGDA, because we have so many indies. There’s at least 150 people who come every month [to the IGDA meet-up] in Melbourne.”

“It’s remarkable to see how it’s changed since the old studio days,” muses Tom Killen of The Voxel Agents, the team behind the Train Conductor games. “The studios were kind of walled off from each other and they didn’t really share that much information… whereas in the indie scene it’s just constantly going on, we’re always talking to each other.”

The Voxel Agents team.

There are so many independent teams making games in Australia that it’s almost overwhelming trying to chart them all. This feature is designed to be a snapshot of where things are at. We’ve spoken to a cross-section of the developers and industry figures who are helping shape the future of Australian games development. Our interviewees are from all sorts of backgrounds, with varying levels of experience and a wide range of skill sets. It’s amazing just how many people are embracing the opportunities the indie scene brings.

Uppercut, for instance, started out as a three man team comprised of veterans of 2K Marin, the Canberra-based studio working on XCOM. Sick of lengthy development cycles - “XCOM was five plus years when we quit and it’s still going... I’d just had enough,” Uppercut’s Ed Orman tells us – the guys decided to parlay their skills into something smaller in scope but still visually impressive and console-like. The result was Epoch, a third person shooter built around a clever cover system running on the Unreal engine. The team has expanded in size this year.

Robot Circus is a three person team, and they're also industry veterans. These ex-Bluetongue (de Blob) employees are moving into a whole new interactive space, working on a dynamic digital storybook, and “feeling that giddy rush which comes from doing something new and exciting,” in the words of Nick Hagger, Bluetongue’s former creative director.

The three founding members of The Voxel Agents, on the other hand, met at university then went their separate ways. The goal was always to create an independent studio, but they did stints at Pandemic, Halfbrick and an interactive film company called Hoodlum, before feeling the time was right. Unlike Uppercut and Robot Circus, which are relatively new studios, The Voxel Agents was formed in 2009. “That was just after the App Store became a thing,” says Tom Killen. “This was before Flight Control was out there. I think Doodlejump was already out. There’d been a couple of games that had shown the potential of this market, and it was an open platform… we knew that the quality of the games we were making was actually a lot better than most of the games that were on there at that time.” Since then they’ve grown the team and have a number of successful titles under their belts, including the excellent Train Conductor games.

Larger still is Defiant Development, the studio behind recent iOS hit Ski Safari. This studio has about a dozen staff members, and is comprised primarily of traditional development veterans, as well as a couple of newcomers. “We're big enough to make a serious impact in the games we make,” says Defiant’s Morgan Jaffit, “but small enough that we can move quickly and respond to the sorts of games we want to see being made in the market. That's a great combo.”

Millipede, on the other hand, is part indie, part web/mobile design agency. The team does work for clients in order to bankroll its own projects. Starting out as a Flash dev studio – “no art department, no producers, just coders with creative flare,” says Wil Monte, it was drawn inexorably to iOS. Bullistic Unleashed was the studio’s “first ‘proper’ foray into the world of indie development and self-publishing.” It’s polished, violent and darkly humorous.

Bullistic Unleashed... a physics puzzler for an adult audience.

While small teams dominate the indie landscape in Australia, there are also a number of single person operations that hark back to the days of the garage developer. 3 Sprockets, for instance, has – until recently – been just one man: Seon Rozenblum. Many years ago he started Sector3, a VFX and animation company, which transitioned into game development. Rozenblum has been making games (mostly) on his own for years and earlier this year had a hit on iPad and Steam with Cubemen. “Looking back at all the games I’ve made from Sector3 onwards,” he tells us, “every single one of them has been a financial success. I’ve never had a failed game, in about 18 titles. Now, some of them may have only made a little money, but none of them have ever lost money or failed financially.”

Initials Games’ Shane Brouwer is another one man studio. A 3D artist working in advertising by trade, he created the superb Super Lemonade Factory for iOS in his spare time, and believes that indie games are much more personal than those made by big teams. “These games by smaller teams become so much more than just a game,” he explains. “It's not some faceless corporation pushing out licensed movie tie ins or sequel after sequel. Now you've got a face to go with your favourite game. You can play Braid, and look up its creator, you can probably get his attention on Twitter, and you can watch him give a post-mortem on Braid, and suddenly you've got this complex picture of someone who is making incredible video games.”

Each of these developers face significant challenges in making their games a success. The App Store, in particular, is a hugely competitive space, and by and large these guys are far more interested in making games than marketing. We’ll leave the challenges of independent development for a follow-up feature, however, and focus on why it’s such an exciting scene, and what it represents for Australian game development.

A number of common threads ran through our conversations with the above developers. Being independent means being in control of their own destinies. Being in smaller teams means more versatility and more room to experiment. Being part of an indie movement means more information sharing and true community. And importantly, the games coming out of this scene are properties that will be owned in Australia, laying the foundation for stability in the future.

“Right now, I really like having a small team of people that I work with in a small company – it’s really liberating,” says Uppercut’s Ed Orman. “The opportunities to make your own IP, which I think is the only way to really build value in the industry, is now so much higher. It’s exciting for us.” Another member of the Uppercut team, Andrew James, agrees, “We like the fact that we can self-publish on the App Store or on Google Play, and not have those significant overheads for marketing or finding a publisher.”

“I love what I'm doing now,” says Robot Circus’ Nick Hagger. The team’s goal for their new label is “about being innovative, being idealistic and building things which have positive human values. Now that possibly sounds like a recipe for disaster, but I believe that once you invest yourself in something that is a product of your creative passion, then the quality and value of what you are making shines through, and makes it stand out. I figure if you have the opportunity to be independent, then you should embrace everything that that independence offers you.”

After years of working on his own (“a hard way to stay creative”), 3 Sprockets’ Seon Rozenblum says he’s enjoying being part of the wider indie community. “I’m a big proponent of sharing information,” he tells us. “Sometimes too much information. I quite openly talk to people about how well Cubemen’s doing and why, from my perspective… I definitely don’t know it all. I’m far from the world’s best game developer, but I’ve had a lot of experience... I’m definitely someone to come and talk to about running a game business and looking at the successful thing to do.”

Cubemen's unique look matched the gameplay wonderfully.

So how did this all come about? Well, the collapse of the traditional studio system obviously had a huge impact on the job market within the games industry in Australia. Hundreds of veterans found themselves looking for work, while up and coming game designers, coders and artists no longer had many established studios at which to get a start. At the same time, new platforms like iOS and Android were changing the way games could be developed and published, and gamers around the world were embracing the output of indie studios on mobile, the web, PC and console. All these factors, along with the will and the talent, combined to create fertile ground for Aussie development to rise from the ashes. It’s a competitive market, but Australia’s in a great position.

“I think the indies are leading this resurgence,” says Millipede’s Wil Monte. “The closure of the larger studios over the last few years has been terrible for many. However, from this fallout we have seen some amazing independent studios appear. Likeminded people who worked well together at these large studios have started their own thing, working to their own rules and direction, producing the games they have always wanted to but couldn’t previously – and they are creating some really incredible stuff. The talent that was kinda ‘locked up’ in these large studios is now blossoming and showing the world that Australia is an incredibly innovative nation in this field.”

This positivity was reflected in every interview I did. It’s a refreshing change from the feeling in the industry only a few years ago. Our developers are excited about where the Australian industry is heading. They’re excited about the successes we’ve already had and those that are likely to come.

“The games industry at the moment reminds me of the music industry in the 90s,” says Initials’ Shane Brouwer. “The barrier to entry has been lowered so that anyone with the drive and the time can make a game, and a bunch of young upstarts can make a product that can compete with the established power players. The game designers of the future are going to come from all different fields. With computers more and more part of our daily lives, it's entirely possible for a film director to make a game, or a comic artist, literally anyone can make a game.”

“The great thing about the Aussie industry is that we are so based in the future of games, not the past,” believes Surprise Attack’s Chris Wright. “There is so little development going on here that is based on the declining part of the industry… and although no one really knows where the industry’s going, it’s great that 90-95% of our industry is focused on the digital space, whether it’s free-to-play, whether it’s mobile or browser or whatever, because we have a stronger chance of coming through at the head of that, in a few years, than places like Canada, for example, which has a great indie scene, but it’s so heavily console-based, and as that declines, what’s going to happen to all those people if they come into this new industry four or five years after everyone else? They’re really going to struggle.”

The Australian industry is now focused on the future.

Even bigger players in the Australian industry are shifting focus to embrace the changing landscape. Take SEGA Studios Australia, which has “successfully risen to the challenge of transforming the business to entirely digital, across all platforms,” according to Studio Director Marcus Fielding. “This transition wasn’t achieved overnight, and has been in the works for over eight months with support from SEGA publishing offices around the world. Unfortunately, this re-alignment did bring about structural changes, but we feel we’ve now emerged from that difficult phase. Currently, the 36 strong team at SSA have regrouped, realigned their creative and technical strengths and are storming ahead on high profile licensed and original SEGA IP.”

The future, then, is looking bright for the Australian industry. We’re less centralised and able to react to changes in the market far more effectively than before. It’s an exciting period for all concerned, whether small and indie, or big and backed by a major publisher. “I’m really excited by where we are right now,” says Tony Lay of EA-owned Firemonkeys. “We’re coming from that legacy of service for hire, moving into something where there’s a lot of indies coming up, so they can be a lot more creative, because the resources that you need to make a game is a lot less. It’s less risky to just jump in, and there’s no barriers to entry. Someone who can rally a team together can put something on the App Store, and actually test it against the market. That whole cycle of learning was never available to developers, and that’s something they need to take advantage of.

“All of these [other] platforms are opening up [too],” he continues, “so it almost goes back down to the basics now. Is this game fun? Is it appealing to the audience that you’re trying to appeal to?”

Can the Australian industry truly make an impact on the world stage? It’s in a better position to do so than it has been in years. Just don’t expect it to happen on the next generation of consoles; expect it happen on that computer in your pocket, via your web browser or perhaps streamed to your TV.

As mentioned earlier, we'll be running a follow-up piece of the challenges of being an indie developer in the next week, so keep an eye on the site. For now, hit the next page for more info on our interviewees' games!

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