The South African Game Dev Scene
Hi to all!! Firstly, I want to say that I'm glad to be a part of this community and that I'm new here.
There has been something on my mind regarding the game development scene of South Africa, and that is the overall maturity of games that are locally released in this country. Overall the games that have hit it big in this country and, correct me if I'm wrong, are not entirely mature. Most games can appeal to audiences that are of tender age (except for Genital Jousting, which I think is South African but don't know entirely). What I'm trying to say, to put it bluntly, is if a studio from S.A were to make a post-apocalyptic game based in South Africa that actually took itself seriously (like Fallout) the world would struggle to take the game seriously. I do indeed stand to be corrected, but I do feel that most games that are to be made by our local devs should focus more on their passion for game development and design to deliver more mature experiences (and I'm not talking individually, because most of you guys here have hella passion! :D) I mean from a group and team standpoint. If there are any serious games made in S.A, please do shut me up and link me :D But seriously though, any sort of game with a mature and compelling storyline and narrative made in S.A would be universally respected, if made right. And no disrespect to all the local devs who blatantly do not want to make serious games with mature storylines. The main thing here is to just make the world see S.A as a country that can make some really good games. For example, look at what The Witcher did for Poland :)
There has been something on my mind regarding the game development scene of South Africa, and that is the overall maturity of games that are locally released in this country. Overall the games that have hit it big in this country and, correct me if I'm wrong, are not entirely mature. Most games can appeal to audiences that are of tender age (except for Genital Jousting, which I think is South African but don't know entirely). What I'm trying to say, to put it bluntly, is if a studio from S.A were to make a post-apocalyptic game based in South Africa that actually took itself seriously (like Fallout) the world would struggle to take the game seriously. I do indeed stand to be corrected, but I do feel that most games that are to be made by our local devs should focus more on their passion for game development and design to deliver more mature experiences (and I'm not talking individually, because most of you guys here have hella passion! :D) I mean from a group and team standpoint. If there are any serious games made in S.A, please do shut me up and link me :D But seriously though, any sort of game with a mature and compelling storyline and narrative made in S.A would be universally respected, if made right. And no disrespect to all the local devs who blatantly do not want to make serious games with mature storylines. The main thing here is to just make the world see S.A as a country that can make some really good games. For example, look at what The Witcher did for Poland :)
Comments
2) Why would anyone in the world care whether a game is a) made in SA or b) made for a mature audience, and why would either a) or b) result in them "struggle to take the game seriously"?
I'm not really convinced that The Witcher is a good example here. I mean, The Witcher 3 cost 1 Billion Rand to make. Nothing made in South Africa anytime soon is likely to be as famous as The Witcher, so even a serious game like Stasis (which is very successful for a South African game, and very successful for the team that developed it) is never going to have the sort of effect for South Africa as The Witcher had for Poland.
Not saying South African's shouldn't try make games with serious themes. I'm just saying comparing our fame to that of a game with a Billion Rand budget isn't very relevant.
Also, did you know both Soldat and Super Hot were from Poland? (and they're both pretty weird and silly). Though too be fair the majority of Polish games are dark and depressing, like This War Of Mine.
Hellblade - which has been praised as a budget AAA title was still in the R130 000 000 ballpark.
We make niche games for a niche audience and thats where we have had our success. With Desolation we are trying to expand that niche a little - but its still nicely inside our comfort zone.
When you start to compete with Witcher 3 you are going to be compared to Witcher 3 - except we have a fraction of the budgets or the talent pool to draw from.
The stories may be here - the budgets arent.
Hatred is also a game from Poland.
Obviously Hatred shouldn't represent Poland anymore than Genital Jousting should represent South Africa. But off the top of my head it's one of the games I associate with Poland.
(To be clear, I like Polish people, I've had Polish friends most of my life and I've got friends in the Polish game community, particularly in Flying Wild Hog who develop Shadow Warrior. I don't make very serious games, but I love a dark sense of humour. Knowing Polish people it doesn't surprise me that their output is on average way darker than the rest of the industry, and if I were to make games in another country I'd definitely consider doing it in Poland)
Also, P.S. The progress on Beautiful Desolation is looking super sweet!
BroForce is not a serious game, but IS a good game.
But even that statement could be wrong depending on what each persons definition of "serious" and "good" are.
The Witcher could very easily have been made by a non-polish company and still had the same lore - as the novels are based on Polish myths.
I suppose the best response to that is that if you feel that there is a gap in the market - fill it. Make it. Write those stories. Make those games. There is literally the entirety of human knowledge at your fingertips - and more tools available for creators than there have ever been. The distribution is there - the tools are there - the knowledge is there. Thanks mate! Its still a long road ahead - but its all starting to come together!
My main point was that I feel that it'd be great to see more narrative driven experiences made in South Africa to be proud of the game dev scene in S.A. And don't get me wrong, Stasis was great!
My deepest apologies!
I personally love narrative driven experiences, but I can give you an answer as to why more SA devs arent making them.
Games with a heavy focus on narrative are HARD to make and HARD to sell. Those are two aspects of a project that nobody wants to start off with as a baseline!
Narrative games require a huge amount of custom content to be created. One off characters, dialogue options and narrative branches that may never be explored, a huge amount of preplanning that - when dealing with a large team - can severely constrict how a game is made. You have very little 'wiggle room' with narrative games. If you run out of money and you haven't finished the story - the game cannot be released.
There is also the huge concern that your story wont quite 'hit' the mark - and that even once you've spent a huge amount of money on the game that people simply wont buy it because they don't buy into the story.
When you have a large team of people whos salaries rely on you shipping a title, creating a narrative experience that is non scalable is a very dangerous route to go.
Arguably, the MVP (Minimal viable product) for a game like Desolation is going to be VERY different to the MVP of something like BroForce.
How we have managed to (hopefully) go around those hurdles is to keep our production down to a shoe string by having multi-disciplined team members.
Personally I am doing ALL of the art. In that umbrella I'm including the main art design, high poly modeling and rendering, characters (low poly and high poly), animation, portraits, UI design, cinematics, texturing, marketing art, simulation, animated elements such as fire, smoke, water, etc.
I also handle the narrative design, level design, character design, writing of outlines for any contractors, and handle a lot of the social media side.
Nic handles the programming, developing our Unity framework which includes (beyond the actual game) localisation systems, multi-platform support, multiple control schemes, scalability of the framework, save systems (which in a narrative game are a WHOLE other kettle of fish!) etc. He also does all of the sound design, additional music, webpage design, support, marketing, legal (contacts, trademarks, etc).
Nic also deals with contractors and pretty much anything deadline related or outsourced.
We split duties on a lot of the game design and story, and I generally handle the VO mixing and editing when its done - and I know Im missing out about 100 things here split between us.
I know that there are very few people who could do what we are doing. The only way that are able to pull it off is because we have been working together for more than 14 years - and we've done it before. And even then we STILL run a VERY tight ship.
That said there ARE ways around this.
Graphic novels and other interactive fiction are really cool ways to get stories out there.
Im going to be DMing my first game with some friends in a few weeks - and Im basing my story on an idea I've had ratting around in my head for ages. I would love to write up campaigns and give them to other DM's to play through.
RPG maker is a fantastic tool to get very cool stories across and prototype games in.
Twine is MADE to tell stories in an awesome interactive way.
I've been listening to PodCasts like The Magnus Files and The Black Tapes - there is NO reason why a creative person couldn't do something similar to that but set locally.
Narrative games are a hard way to go about it without a solid foundation and a lot of faith. But hell - If I'd taken my own advice I probably would never have made STASIS. So I say it again - if you wanna tell those stories - TELL THEM!