Tantalus opens new studio in Brisbane

With 40 development studios, thousands of employees, and a revenue of more than A$100 million per year, the Australian game development industry is showing no signs of slowing down.

This week, leading Australian game development studio Tantalus announced the opening of its new studio in Brisbane's QUT Creative Enterprise Australia (CEA) Accelerator Hub.

Tantalus CEO Tom Crago told GameSpot AU it was the right time for the studio to expand.

"We had to make a decision between growing our Melbourne studio and opening a new operation somewhere else," Crago said. "Personally, I felt that 80 to 90 developers was about the right size for a game studio, in terms of maintaining a culture most conducive for people enjoying their time at work."

Tantalus has previously worked with publishers like Nintendo, THQ, Eidos, Atari, and Sierra. The studio's most successful franchise is Pony Friends for the Nintendo DS, which has sold around 1 million units to date globally. Other successful titles include Cars: Mater National (DS and GBA), Top Gear Rally (GBA), and Unreal II (Xbox).

The new Tantalus Brisbane studio has already begun work on an unannounced DS project with a big publisher, producing the title in what Crago calls a "similar manner" to Tantalus' other DS offerings. After the studio's current title, the team will move on to making games on other platforms.

"Our next phase of growth and platform diversification will see the release of the company’s first Wii title and the addition of PlayStation 3 and digital distribution projects," Crago said.

Tantalus's move to Brisbane was a natural choice. The city is well known in the industry for its wide pool of game development talent and, along with Melbourne, plays home to the majority of the country's dev studios.

"We already had a strong presence in Melbourne, and as we grew it felt natural to expand into Brisbane," Crago said. "Queensland has some fantastic educational institutions producing great graduates, and of course there is a ready-made resource pool in and around the existing industry. The Queensland Government is very supportive of the industry. There's no reason why other Australian capital cities can't follow Brisbane and Melbourne's lead. It would be great to see some more activity in Sydney, Adelaide, and Perth."

Crago is also president of the Game Developers' Asssociation of Australia (GDAA), which has been very vocal about securing beneficial tax breaks from the Australian Government for the video game industry.

"At the moment, we're still waiting on an audience with Minister Garrett [in regards to this matter]," Crago said.