Asia Dev Watch: Cabal Entertainment Software
This month, the team that consists of two former staff members from Interplay and BioWare speaks to GameSpot Asia about why they're in the indie scene.
Based on the plethora of game industry news one sees online, gamers are well aware that making triple-A titles for a high-profile company for years can burn a developer out. Case in point--the developers of the Singapore-based Cabal Entertainment Software.
The indie company consists of three people: CEO Danien Chee, art director Jason Spykerman, and business & finance partner Erwin Zee. Technically, the company has worked together with another local company called Nexgen Studio to create the iOS shooter Terrables.
Currently, they are working on a game called Celestial Rabbit for the iOS, which is slated to come out this February in correlation to the Chinese New Year. At the same time, the company is also slowly creating a strategy action title called Shuffleboard Vikings, which is exactly what you expect from the title.
GameSpot Asia: Tell us a bit about how you got started in the video games industry.
Danien Chee: I joined Interplay at about March 1999. I was in the strategy and action division called 14 Degrees East. I was on the Star Trek: Klingon Academy project. I was also transferred to Black Isle and worked on the Icewind Dale: Heart of Winter expansion pack. Around 2000, I was in Pandemic and was working on Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction.
After that title, I was pretty much burned out of the whole triple-A development culture. I spoke to my friend Eric Fong from Interplay's QA department, who offered a proposition to start a small game development company a few years ago and see if we could do something like that in Singapore. It was good timing; the Singaporean government too was taking an initiative around that year to push game development locally, especially when it came with the Media Development Authority.
Jason Spykerman: I went to Vancouver Film School and took up 3D animation around 2000. It was a turning point for me; I learned more from my colleagues than from school. Close to graduation, I took a chance and sent our reel to BioWare. I ended up working on environments for Baldur's Gate 2: Throne of Baal, spaceships in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and even Jade Empire.
I must admit, back in the day, jumping from Baldur's Gate 2's Infinity engine to something like KOTOR was something that took a while to get used to. I'm especially proud of the visual effects and environment contributions I did for Mass Effect: it really has a special place in my heart.
At that point, I've done a lot in BioWare; each of these four projects was huge to say the least. So I decided to see how I fare on my own. I headed back to Malaysia, full of idealism and feel that I could change up the industry on local soil. I worked together with Terence Tan and eventually met Danien after a few projects with Big Bad Robots.
DC: At the time when Cabal Games was created, I much rather wanted to earn my stripes instead of letting whatever grant and investment we could spoil us and made us unsure about the company's path. So we put in our money, learn at our own pace, and figure things out from there. That's why it took us quite a while to figure out our clear direction; we were looking at serious games for funding, looking to do one or two kinds of PC games. Later in 2005, I met up with Terence Tan of Big Bad Robots and then worked on some indie projects together for about a year or so.
GameSpot Asia: How's the progress of your upcoming title Shuffleboard Vikings?
DC: Because of the Celestial Rabbit project, we decided to take four to five weeks off away from developing the game. We figured that since we weren't in any pressure, we can try to get a product out just in time for Chinese New Year.
JS: It's a far less complicated game than Shuffleboard Vikings. It's a good morale boost to get something that's potentially good out of the door quickly.
DC: This is definitely one of the advantages of a small company: you can make decisions quickly and just decide what we need depending on the timing and current trend. For Celestial Rabbit, we need two artists to do brush strokes in digital format. It's not easy to find them, but we can switch projects around easily should the worst happen.
You can't do that in a big company, period. Not only do you have to retrain artists and programmers, but a lot of groundwork and time can be lost within the switch from one project to another.
JS: It's both a blessing and a curse. If you're not careful, it's very easy to lose focus. You can end up with nothing but four or five unfinished products.
GameSpot Asia: Why go indie in the first place? What's the motivation that drives you to do so?
JS: Food(laughs)! Food in this part of the world is better. In some sense, it's homesickness, but in others, a change of scenery and being able to take advantage of being mobile.
DC: Apart from being burnt out, initially it was to take control of our own fate. One of the things we realize when working with big publishers, everything we're working for is for someone else. On a surface, companies love to state that people are our greatest assets, but whether they treat you as such, well, it was a totally different story.
Shuffleboard Vikings: an odd mix indeed.
I loved how Black Isle operated back in the day because it was a rare case of people in the company staying put for 10 years. You really felt like your teammates love what they were doing. We missed a lot of that as time went by; publisher pressure just came in. You can't blame them; a lot of it is the reality of the market, stemming from what people want to play and what they liked as a whole.
Smaller teams have better dynamics, and it's just fun overall. A lot of the misconceptions of business were cured throughout the years thanks to the indie community being supportive of each other. Everyone's just sharing information, from game design to business practices. We realize that finding people we like working with and just putting out these projects made reasonable business sense. When the artist works, you don't have to tell them to improve the artwork because they're driven to self-improvement.
GameSpot Asia: Do you have any plans to do Shuffleboard Vikings for the Android? Why pick the iOS first?
DC: Typically, companies were just chasing the dollar and used games as a means to grab that dollar. Everyone was looking for the mystical fantasy project that could help them achieve stardom. After some reflection, we decided that chasing that sort of dream won't make us happy.
GameSpot Asia: Have you considered other platforms like the Android, PSN, or XBLA for your work?
DC: They all have the similar problem of huge fragmentation of hardware and different OS conflicts within the same product. For instance, the fragmentation of the iOS is minimal. When you look at the Android, however, what we're hearing is that some devices can't be upgraded to a new version of Android because the phone manufacturers call the shots.
If I were to make a game using 2.3, I'll be losing out on market shares from users with a previous version since some of them can't upgrade. Furthermore, I have to keep updating my application to coincide with the different OS versions of the Android instead of moving on to either a new project or adding in new features (DLC) to an existing game. We're still with the iOS because it's the most established portal on the market for indie games development.
For the XBLA and PSN, we initially planned on doing a word game using a webcam for gamers to touch letters to form words. When the XBLA and PSN came out, I figured that said game could be perfect as a living room party game. Getting into XBLA and PSN is a little tough in terms of getting the skill set and through the gateways and hoops. Along with words from other indie developers, it wasn't as lucrative as we thought it was.
GameSpot Asia: What are your perceptions of the games development scene in Singapore and its attempts to promote game development a la the Media Development Authority-Gambit program and government-sanctioned grants?
DC: I think I had stronger opinions a few years back(laughs, but on a worldwide scale, it has gone through a lot of changes. The government's efforts to bring in this initiative are commendable. A lot of people have benefited on that. The question is whether or not it's sustainable. When the incentives run out, will it still remain as competitive, especially with China where the games industry is taking off? I feel that Singapore and Malaysia has been competing with each other for the same talent pool in this regard.
It's still a challenge for governments to come up with effective policies to encourage games development further. At this time, I can't speak about the industry as a whole, but for those who want to take the indie route, I believe that this region is the best place to do it.
You don't need that much manpower to get started, but Malaysia with the Multimedia Development Corporation (MDeC) and Singapore with the MDA, it's more about the community itself. It's also dangerous for midsize companies to go about doing "grant-trepeneurs"; a term where a company starts up and keeps receiving grants from government initiatives and [bearing little fruit as a result].
JS: Personally, it all comes down to the individual. The government can put up whatever incentives they want, but if the individual doesn't make the commitment to themselves, the industry won't budge. It's very important to do your time in an established environment. Large companies stay large for a reason.
For better or worse, they do certain things right that we can learn from there. The important thing is that the individual learns from this; the key is that you should do your time in the trenches, but don't let your dreams get buried under.
Celestial Rabbit: out next month.
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