Game on: the present and future of game development in the Philippines

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.”

 

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?”

 

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 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.”

 

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. 

 

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

 

 

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.”

 

The College of Saint Benilde is one of the venues hosting the Global Game Jam from January 27 to 29, 2012. For more information about the event, go to www.gamefestival.ph/program/gameon/public-voting/participants. — TJD, GMA News