South African game development - will it ever be big?

Lydon

Lydon

New member
What do you guys think?

I'd personally love to see local games being released internationally. I think we'd be perceiver as serious underdogs by the world, but can you imagine how that perception could literally change overnight if we were to get one smash hit out of the door? Not only would that encourage more local guys to get into the industry, but we'd probably see a whole lot more investment in the industry itself.

If Iceland could give us Eve Online, I'm sure we can give the world something better!
 
There was a comapny I Imagine or something like that, who had licences to develop games for both the ps2 and the xbox, they released a commercial game on the xbox as far as I know, I think it was called chase something (and it didnt do so well)
 
I used to develop PC titles exclusively
Released a few in the UK through a publisher as well :)
Problem is that locally none of these games was ever really accepted.
Local perception is that , gamers want BIG hits, they don't appreciate games being developed locally on shoestring budgets for what they are.

We even demo'd the one title at Rage one year, was epic fun, got some good reveiw but yeah , These days I manage iGame and Develop Casual titles on the side.
 
Thanks for the link Dohc.

I see they say they're SA's premier games developer. Looking like they're quite behind the times and need to update their website, though. Nothing they've developed looks like it's at all original either.

A little creativity would do wonders.

Xerowing said:
I used to develop PC titles exclusively
Released a few in the UK through a publisher as well :)
Problem is that locally none of these games was ever really accepted.
Local perception is that , gamers want BIG hits, they don't appreciate games being developed locally on shoestring budgets for what they are.

We even demo'd the one title at Rage one year, was epic fun, got some good reveiw but yeah , These days I manage iGame and Develop Casual titles on the side.
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Very interesting! Couldn't the problem maybe be that no one knows about them, though? I, for example, had no cooking clue regarding said games. We need to work out a way of hyping games both locally and internationally. I'm sure the locals will jump on board once a few internationals take the bait :D
 
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Well I'm personally looking at putting up exactly such a system ( still early days) but somewhere where local developers can showcase their games and concepts.

In conjuntion with that we will be releasing our games locally for the first time
 
Being a third world country I highly doubt we will be any time soon. There are other more important areas for money to go right now. I know of i-Imagine, they've been around for a while, haven't really made it big. We need an indie industry for the time being if we really must get into game development.
 
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These days if it's not an indie game then it will cost a fortune to make a proper game. I've worked on a 3D engine back in the day and also worked on some Windows Mobile games that were released. The biggest problem is that South Africa needs a guy who knows nothing about games but all about business and start a company. That guy needs to get proper funding and set out proper plans.

He can then look for a team leader and start assembling a team from there.

I've seen too often people who want to make amazing games but have no business sense. Unfortunately I am one of those people. ;) First and foremost a game company is a business and it has to be run like one. So I reckon up until we get a game development company which is run by someone who is used to running businesses successfully and not a programmer or an artist, well that's the day when South Africa gets a proper game out there.
 
The best way for a company to start out would be to make a mod based on a current engine like UE3 and release eg. look at how counterstrike took off, considering it was a mod made by unknowns.
 
Its hard to say hey. I would love it if we [South Africa] where able to step onto the world gaming stage and get a decent game out. But i think with the production costs, climate in the country i don't see it happening.
 
Being a third world country i agree that it is hard.

Deadly the company is called Luma. They do everything from design and animation to games.

I interned at Luma a while back. They have a seperate section of the company for game development. I did work on a few projects there, unfortunately i cant say what they were, but I see Luma has just released Marble Blast for the iPhone:

http://www.garagegames.com/products/marble-blast-mobile

And yes, i did work on it :P.

While I was there they were curretly working on about 4 or 5 more games.
 
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Yeah Luma! They game me hope LOL.

Getting into game dev is something I would really love to do...
But first I need to get my programming skills up a bit more... or get it to exist LOL, in the long term I'll try my luck at that yes...
Was always something I wanted to do, and I would love to see a local company make it big so I don't have to move to US or UK to get into the game dev industry.
 
Dragonic then why dont you? They dont make tools like Game Maker and XNA for noobs you know?

Those are both very solid foundations to work with. Hell, i'm making a commercial game as we speak with Game Maker.
 
DuncanBell said:
Dragonic then why dont you? They dont make tools like Game Maker and XNA for noobs you know?

Those are both very solid foundations to work with. Hell, i'm making a commercial game as we speak with Game Maker.
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bello dont u have game maker at home??? which reminds me i havnt given u ur stuff have i???
 
Where do you sell the games that you make in Game Maker DuncanBell?

That's very interesting and impressive.
 
Yeah i have it on my laptop at the mo. I keep most of my work stuff on here, so i classify it as work :).

Solitude I have yet to sell a commercial game, but i have been making small games now and then, i made one called Combat back in school. I took it to the computer room to show my mates. Three days later it was on every bloody computer LOL!

But yeah this is the first game I'm making that I am going to sell. www.bmtmicro.com offers a good solution to selling games. It takes like 10% of what you sell so its not bad at all.
 
That's pretty awesome. Thanks for the link. Oh and if you ever need someone to help beta test then send me a pm. It would be an honour.
 
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