It’s not a stretch to assume that you’ve got another tab open
with a game waiting while reading this article. Video, computer and web
games are ubiquitous, addictive, fun—and local game developers are
already making their mark in the field.
Game development is a US$90 billion worldwide industry, of which
the Philippines has a mere 0.02% market share, but things are looking
pretty good at the moment.
“The local industry is very small right now and we’re trying to get a bigger share of the market,” says Darwin Tardio, president of the Game Development Association of the Philippines (GDAP). “It's booming, and can be lucrative. When GDAP started there were only four member companies. Now, three to four years later, there are 22 companies working on a lot of game projects, many of them big ones.”
“The local industry is very small right now and we’re trying to get a bigger share of the market,” says Darwin Tardio, president of the Game Development Association of the Philippines (GDAP). “It's booming, and can be lucrative. When GDAP started there were only four member companies. Now, three to four years later, there are 22 companies working on a lot of game projects, many of them big ones.”
Studying game development
Several schools currently teach four-year courses in game
development, including the University of the Philippines, Far Eastern
University and the College of Saint Benilde, which was the first school
to offer the full course in the country. It will graduate its first
batch of students with a degree in Information Technology with a
specialization in Game Design and Development in December 2012.
The course can be demanding. Playing games might be a way to pass the time, but developing them is another matter entirely.
“There’s tons of math, tons of physics,” says Norman Lee, Chairperson of Game Design and Development Program at the College of Saint Benilde. “Some might think that they’re just going to play games on this course but they’re not. It’s going to really make them ask themselves, ‘Do I really want to be part of this industry?’”
It’s a good thing, he says, because it weeds out those who aren’t really cut out for the job. “A person can be technical or artsy, but does he have the passion?”
“There’s tons of math, tons of physics,” says Norman Lee, Chairperson of Game Design and Development Program at the College of Saint Benilde. “Some might think that they’re just going to play games on this course but they’re not. It’s going to really make them ask themselves, ‘Do I really want to be part of this industry?’”
It’s a good thing, he says, because it weeds out those who aren’t really cut out for the job. “A person can be technical or artsy, but does he have the passion?”
The program is already getting more applicants than it can
accept, and has had to set a cap of 160 students due to limited
resources.
Not much older than Lee’s students but already quite established in the industry are the six friends who make up By Implication —Levi
Tan-Ong, Jim Chao, Philip Cheang, Wilhansen Li, Kenneth Yu and Rodrick
Tan, friends who dabbled in film, music and games together in high
school and who continued to work together through university.
The group made its name when it won the grand prize in the game design category in Microsoft’s prestigious Imagine Cup in 2010. Wildfire, their winning entry, is a game about saving the world by defeating opponents like poverty and environmental degradation.
The group made its name when it won the grand prize in the game design category in Microsoft’s prestigious Imagine Cup in 2010. Wildfire, their winning entry, is a game about saving the world by defeating opponents like poverty and environmental degradation.
The win got them a lot of visibility and press, but they’re not
resting on their laurels. “We want to accomplish something that people
will know us by, so we keep pushing ourselves higher,” says Cheang. “ We
set out to do something as students; now that we’re [professionals],
we’re setting a higher bar for ourselves.”
They have a specific goal in mind: winning at the Independent Games Festival.
“If we win that it would mean we’re at the same level standard,” says
Yu. “But the market is a competition in itself. If you win in the
market, you’re already a success.”
Gamification
There’s a subcategory of games created to promote a specific product, known as “advergames”.
Komikasi has
created games for clients such as Oreo and Ariel (the soap powder).
While Facebook is the most popular platform for the games right now, the
company also creates advergames that can be played on company websites
or can be downloaded for mobile phones.
Companies like Komikasi work primarily with ad agencies, who
hire them to create games and other content for their clients. “We show
them the positive side of digital media,” says Komikasi’s founder and
head, Ria Lu. “It’s still not 100% accepted, but a lot of agencies are
getting into digital now and we’re dealing with more and more of them.”
There’s a very good reason for advergames: they cost much
cheaper than print or TV advertising, and it keeps people coming back to
that page—“As long as you have something people can do, they’ll be
back,” says Lu. If it’s a long campaign, the developer will keep adding
to the game or even develop new ones for the client. Another advantage
for the client is that digital platforms such as Facebook provide them
with more demographic data of their clients than more traditional forms
of advertising.
Komikasi is focusing on advergames at the moment, with some
outsourcing on the side, and in their free time the developers worked on
a labor of love—Starstruck, a free Android download that works on the
not-unreasonable premise that starlets slapping each other around is
pretty much a Pinoy spectator sport.
It usually takes three to six weeks, on average a month, to
create an advergame. “It’s a very quick process, especially when you’re
dealing with advertising agencies who want it quick,” says Lu. She adds
that the pace can get to some older programmers; but it’s also often an
advantage for Filipino developers. “Sanay tayo sa mabilisan; we can
usually get things done a lot quicker and that’s good when you’re making
advergames.”
Like many game developers, Lu keeps in contact with CSB and
other schools that offer game development programs. Even a small and
relatively new company like Komikasi is ever on the lookout for skilled
talent. Lu started out by hiring freelancers, but when she put up
Komikasi’s Pasong Tamo office in August 2010, she also hired full-time
people for the first time. She expects to hire more people in the
coming year, as more clients come to them for product
“gamification”—using games to make tasks or imparting information more
fun. Knowing how to do that for each specific product is a talent in
itself, and it begins with knowing what your objective is. “You have to
be able to catch yung kiliti ng tao, and to do that you have to know
what you’re doing,” says Lu. “Dapat clear ka kung anong gusto mong
gawin. If you’re going to make a game you should do it for the right
reasons, not just for the sake of saying you made a game.”
It takes a village
Another important factor is having the right people. “The trick
is to find a team that can work together—you need artists, programmers,
musicians, sound people, a game designer. You need to hire different
kinds of people with different skills.”
The need for different talents and skills to make one game is
one reason why coming up with a game development course was not an easy
matter, and why companies find it hard to find good people.
“When we started researching the viability of the course in 2006
and 2007, we met with people in the industry and our first question to
them was, ‘Wala ba kayong nakukuhang tao, with all people graduating
from Com Sci and IT courses?’” says Lee. “But it’s a niche course. In
the US, some courses only teach the technical side. Ours is a hybrid
program; we have technical and arts training side by side, because both
are important components of game design and development. Some students
are more inclined to the technical aspects, and others to arts and
design, but it’s important for them have an understanding of all the
aspects of game development.”
Game development is a team effort, a very important
collaboration between tech people and designers. Students have to learn
how to communicate and work together, because when they graduate,
they’ll be part of a team. The CSB and other schools work closely with
industry professionals, whose input is very much involved in building
school curriculum. Another result of this collaboration is that schools
develop strong ties within the industry, which is important for the
students.
In January, the CSB will be one of the venues of the Global Game
Jam, a meeting of industry pros, hobbyists and students. “We’re looking
forward to other schools participating in it and having more people
play and develop games,” says Lee.
Outsourcing vs original games
Right now, outsourcing constitutes the bulk of local game
developers’ work, but while it already provides a creative outlet and
source of profit, those with a passion for the industry will always want
to develop their own games from start to finish.
“Right now, the industry incentivizes BPOs [i.e., outsourcing] and not original IPs,” says By Implication senior programmer Jim Choa. While By Implication is getting a lot of outsourcing commissions for us from the US and the UK, their original games—among them, Scram and the award-winning Wildfire—are also getting them attention. “We went into this because we desperately wanted to make our own games,” says Levi. “We care about profit, but our first priority is making quality games.”
“Right now, the industry incentivizes BPOs [i.e., outsourcing] and not original IPs,” says By Implication senior programmer Jim Choa. While By Implication is getting a lot of outsourcing commissions for us from the US and the UK, their original games—among them, Scram and the award-winning Wildfire—are also getting them attention. “We went into this because we desperately wanted to make our own games,” says Levi. “We care about profit, but our first priority is making quality games.”
Fun Guy Studio,
co-founded by Tardio, currently has several clients from abroad who
outsource work to them, but they also develop their own ideas.
One example is Sqwishland.com, a project they did for a US company, developed around their toy.
One example is Sqwishland.com, a project they did for a US company, developed around their toy.
Fun Guy Studio currently employs about 40 game developers. It
recently partnered with 2XL Games, one of the biggest US game
developers, and is now looking to expand its staff to more than 100
people by the end of next year.
Doing good through games
The game development course at CSB is not just meant to teach
students how to design and create games; Lee believes that it can be
used for a higher purpose than just entertainment and profit. “Aside
from a technical education, we want this to be holistic as well,” he
says. “We want to teach them a sense of nationhood, to see what’s
outside, to design for other purposes, like education and to push
advocacies.” For this latter purpose, the industry also creates “serious
games”—advocacy-based games that teach players values. Lee sees the
potential of serious games to help NGOs and other such groups. “Normally
people use video games for entertainment. But it’s a media that can be
used to convey information,” he says. “We can actually use games to
educate and inform. We want to partner with NGOs and even the
government, using games as positive tools to help people.”
This kind of use for video games can change how many people see
the medium. “There’s a common misconception about being in a game
development course,” says Lee. “Especially among concerned parents—ang
unang isip nila ay nakakasira ito ng buhay, and they think that the kids
just play games. But they don’t, and we hope that the parents can see
that game development can be used in a positive way.”
The pros and cons of becoming a game developer
- Recruitment is huge…because finding talented people can be difficult. Game development companies, even small ones, are always on the lookout for talented people to join their ranks, even to the point of trawling schools for promising talent. “Some of the students already have people from the industry offering them jobs, but of course we want them to finish their studies first,” says Lee. And the reason why recruitment is huge is because finding people with the skills and the passion is still not easy. “The lack of qualified talent is one reason why the industry is not so big yet.”
- It’s still a struggle to make it...but you can do it with talent and hard work. There are as yet no tax incentives to work in the business, so many game developers do other work on the side, such as teach. “It’s still a small industry,” says Ong. “Most companies that are going to hire you are small and may not pay that well, but there’s a lot of space, and if you’re good you can go far and make money.”
- It’s not yet as heavily regulated as other forms of media, but you must live by the code—the honor code. It’s easy to spot copies of a popular game—something that’s often the case here, says Lu. When developers do this they’re working against their own interests, because copycat games saturate the market, plus they lay themselves open to a charge of plagiarism. “I’m not saying that everything has to be completely original—at least have a new take on it,” says Lu. Cheang agrees. “There has to be a level of respect. We love ripping each other’s stuff, but not ripping it off.”
- Filipinos have an advantage. As Lu said, Filipinos work fast, a huge advantage when it comes to game development. “Labor is cheaper here than the competition in the US and Europe, plus we speak English,” she adds. Talent is abundant as well. “There are a lot of Filipino graphic artists who are really good—we are really comfortable doing both Western-style and Eastern-style artwork, so that’s a plus,” says Tardio.
Leveling up
The Philippines is still small fry in the big pond of game
development, but local talent and ability is beginning to get recognized
here and abroad. Lu believes that Filipino developers are using their
underdog status to their advantage—by helping each other out. “There are
a lot of game developers and a lot of games out there in the world.
Pwede kang malunod. Yung maganda sa local industry ay nagtutulungan
kami. Working together is a nice thing kasi hindi mo kalaban ang Pinoy,
but the rest of the world.” Being able to pass certain aspects of a
project to an outside specialist means you don’t have to turn projects
down. This versatility and resourcefulness can help promote the country
when it comes to game development.
“I believe the Philippines can compete in such a creative
industry with what we have, and with the help of academe, and I’m
looking forward to how we will contribute to the world of game
development, competing with the US, Korea, and the rest of the world.
The local industry is bigger than ever, and growing every year,” says
Lee. “I hope that kids realize that they can be game developers if they
want to. There is a very lively industry here in the Philippines, and I
hope more people dive into it. Maybe we can come up with a triple-A
game. I believe we can do it.”
[source GMA News]
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