Global Gamers, Global Developers: Five Developers off the Beaten Track

Published on by John Sweeney
Scrumpmonkey touches on five different game development studios from areas you might not think of when it comes to powerhouse game development studios

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The growth of a new se­ries of game de­vel­op­ment stu­dios out­side of the usu­al hubs of the USA, Japan and Western Europe has gone under-reported and cer­tain­ly under-analysed when we talk about “di­verse voic­es” in gam­ing. We’ve seen a seis­mic shift, with de­vel­op­ers cre­at­ing big, am­bi­tious 3D games for a frac­tion of the de­vel­op­ment cost of the lat­est Call of Duty or Assassins Creed game –- es­pe­cial­ly stu­dios in Central and Eastern Europe. Here are five stu­dios from places you might not nec­es­sar­i­ly as­so­ciate with game de­sign, but who’s ti­tles can nev­er­the­less stand proud­ly amongst the gi­ants of the gam­ing world:

GSC Game World

What comes to mind when you hear the word “Ukraine?” I bet it isn’t “games stu­dios that make ti­tles that sell multi-millions of copies,” but that’s pre­cise­ly what the coun­try pro­duced in GSC Game World. Founded in Kiev in 1995 and first known for the Cossacks se­ries of strat­e­gy games. GSC made a rad­i­cal shift in 2007 re­leas­ing S.T.A.L.K.E.R., an am­bi­tious FPS set in the Chernobyl ex­clu­sion zone. The game sat in what seemed like de­vel­op­ment hell for al­most six years, but even­tu­al­ly in March 2007 the “Shadow of Chernobyl” fell over the word. Interestingly enough, dur­ing this time, some of their for­mer staff had also found­ed the fel­low Ukrainian de­vel­op­ment stu­dio “4A Games,” who we will cov­er later.

The addage goes: “make what you know.” Growing up on the doorstep of one of the largest eco­log­i­cal dis­as­ter zones on the plan­et will give you a unique sense of post-soviet — and even real life post-apocalyptic — de­cay. Many of the S.L.A.K.E.R. games (rather dat­ed) tex­tures were de­rived from ac­tu­al pho­tos of the Exclusion Zone tak­en on an ear­ly dig­i­tal cam­era. This makes the game feel very unique­ly Ukrainian, be­ing steeped in both the mythos of the zone and the cul­ture of every day Kiev. I’m not the only one who will gush about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. when giv­en the chance; it has a loy­al fol­low­ing and ex­ten­sive mod­ding com­mu­ni­ty to this day.

Sadly, GSC Game World be­came de­funct in 2011. Although it was an­nounced that the stu­dio would re-open in December 2014, much of the team have splin­tered off into oth­er stu­dios and projects — in­clud­ing Vostok games, who re­cent­ly re­leased on­line free to play shoot­er Suvarium.

TaleWorlds Entertainment

Starting in 2004 as a hob­by project of stu­dio founder Armağan Yavuz and his wife İpek Yavuz, Mount and Blade is a game that re­ceived a huge­ly warm and pos­i­tive re­cep­tion from gamers. So much so that it al­lowed them to found a stu­dio lo­cat­ed in Ankara, Turkey in 2005 and even­tu­al­ly led to Mount and Blade be­com­ing a full PC re­lease in 2008. They are cur­rent­ly in de­vel­op­ment of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.

The game was rough and ready but also a lit­tle ba­sic and out­dat­ed in many as­pects. But Mount & Blade fo­cus­es in on game play el­e­ments most me­dieval RPGs miss out on; the re­al­i­ties of com­mand­ing a mid­dle age arms and the im­por­tance of mount­ed com­bat. This abil­i­ty to mar­ry game play as­pects that re­al­ly en­gage a play­er with me­chan­ics that are gen­er­al­ly put on the back-burner of most games is a theme I see run­ning through these stu­dios and their ti­tles. As their first com­mer­cial project, it was am­bi­tious and pret­ty suc­cess­ful in most of what it set out to do, and it filled a hun­gry niche in the mar­ket for its style of a more down to earth me­dieval ex­pe­ri­ence sans fan­ta­sy elements.

The for­mu­la was im­proved upon in Mount and Blade: Warband, a game I am per­son­al­ly a huge fan of. Even though some of the sub­se­quent ex­pan­sions and DLCs have had mixed re­views, they still main­tain that unique feel of com­mand­ing a band of pe­ri­od ac­cu­rate me­dieval fight­ers.  PC fo­cused (as most of the games dis­cussed here are) it had com­plex, some­times finicky, but ul­ti­mate­ly re­ward­ing systems.

Their out­put has been sin­gu­lar­ly the Mount and Blade fran­chise, with slight­ly less ac­tiv­i­ty the past cou­ple of years. But that might have some­thing to do with on­go­ing the de­vel­op­ment of Mount & Blade II.

4A Games

A close rel­a­tive of GSC Game World and co-founded by some of the peo­ple who led the cre­ation of the X‑Ray en­gine that pow­ered S.T.A.L.K.E.R., 4A games is an­oth­er Kiev-based de­vel­op­er known for their post-apocalyptic shoot­er se­ries Metro. The game is based on the books of the same name by Russian au­thor Dmitry Glukhovsky. Releasing their first game Metro 2033 in 2010, they have gone on to great suc­cess de­spite the odds.

4A Games has sur­vived the death of their pub­lish­er THQ and the hell­ish de­vel­op­ment crunch un­der re­place­ment pub­lish­er Deep Silver. Even the on­go­ing Ukraine cri­sis, which caused the stu­dio to move their head­quar­ters to Malta in 2014 to avoid the con­flict, couldn’t keep them down. Harrowing tales of the de­vel­op­ment con­di­tions for Metro Redux came to light when they spoke about hav­ing to smug­gle PS4 and Xbox One de­vel­op­ment kits into the coun­try to avoid the crum­bling and cor­rupt cus­toms sys­tem, but they still man­aged to pro­duce an ex­cel­lent prod­uct. It’s sto­ries and tri­umphs like this that show just how patent­ly ridicu­lous (and ig­no­rant of in­ter­na­tion­al af­fairs) the “white priv­i­lege” nar­ra­tive of the gam­ing press re­al­ly is.

Metro 2033, Metro: Last Light, and their re­spec­tive im­proved Redux ver­sions have been met with crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess, as well has be­ing com­mu­ni­ty fa­vorites.  The Metro se­ries boasts un­com­pro­mis­ing graph­i­cal fi­deli­ty on their flag­ship PC re­leas­es and have be­come fa­mous for their at­mos­phere and rich set­ting — once again bring­ing AAA qual­i­ty games to mar­ket at a frac­tion of tra­di­tion­al AAA costs. Something that looks to be more and more pos­si­ble in a glob­al games marketplace.

A close rel­a­tive of GSC Game World and co-founded by some of the peo­ple who led the cre­ation of the X‑Ray en­gine that pow­ered S.T.A.L.K.E.R., 4A games is an­oth­er Kiev-based de­vel­op­er known for their post-apocalyptic shoot­er se­ries Metro. The game is based on the books of the same name by Russian au­thor Dmitry Glukhovsky. Releasing their first game Metro 2033 in 2010, they have gone on to great suc­cess de­spite the odds.

Wargaming

After a show­ing of more sin­gle play­er fo­cused ex­pe­ri­ences, we move on now to a run­away on­line gam­ing suc­cess. Based in Belarus and Cyprus, Wargaming orig­i­nal­ly de­vel­oped the Massive Assault se­ries but is best known for their World of Tanks MMO tank bat­tle game re­leased in 2011. A game that was re­ceiv­ing a huge amount of com­mu­ni­ty at­ten­tion and praise even be­fore its release.

As of December 2013 there were 75,000,000 World of Tanks play­ers reg­is­tered world­wide with and a peak of 1.1 mil­lion con­cur­rent play­ers. That’s a lot of users and the bulk of their suc­cess ac­tu­al­ly came in Russia and Eastern Europe it­self, show­ing there is huge de­mand for games that cater to that mar­ket. As a free to play on­line game fund­ed by play­er pur­chas­es, World of Tanks was also able to avoid much of the pira­cy ram­pant in places like Russia — pira­cy fu­eled most­ly by less than ide­al game pric­ing, lo­cal­iza­tion, and dis­tri­b­u­tion po­lices of in­ter­na­tion­al pub­lish­ers. World of Tanks is proof that gamers in any part of the world will pay for a prod­uct if it’s priced correctly.

World of Tanks pro­vides ac­cess to the tank ar­se­nal of most ma­jor world pow­ers, it’s a game that does one thing very well: tanks -– and it shows that if you have a fo­cused mod­el with re­ward­ing game play and a free to play econ­o­my that isn’t too greedy then you can find great fi­nan­cial suc­cess.  The “World of…” fran­chise has spawned fur­ther games like World of Warships and World of Warplanes.

The Astronauts

 

Founded in 2012 in Warsaw, Poland by the orig­i­nal founders of People Can Fly (de­vel­op­ers of Bulletstorm and Painkiller fame) The Astronauts set out to cre­ate a graph­i­cal­ly beau­ti­ful world in which to tell a sto­ry. What they came up with was The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Released in September 2014, the game has gone on to great crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial success.

The game fol­lows the dark and su­per­nat­ur­al tale of the dis­ap­pear­ance of Ethan Carter, and a detective’s dis­turb­ing jour­ney through the fic­tion­al town of Red Creek Valley to lo­cate him. The game is not­ed for its breath-taking vi­su­als and ground-breaking tech­ni­cal achieve­ments, all the more sur­pris­ing com­ing from an in­de­pen­dent stu­dio and small eight mem­ber team.  Sometimes mis­tak­en­ly de­rid­ed as a “walk­ing sim­u­la­tor,” the game has puz­zle and problem-solving  el­e­ments giv­ing the sto­ry a moody pacing.

One of The Astronauts them­selves, co-owner Adrian Chmielarz, has been quite out­spo­ken on the sub­ject of glob­al game de­sign and the chal­lenges fac­ing de­sign­ers out­side of the U.S. He main­tains that many of those mak­ing games are be­ing held to an un­fair­ly American stan­dard dri­ven by in­ter­nal pol­i­tics. The per­cep­tion of games, game de­sign the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty seems very dif­fer­ent in cen­tral and east­ern Europe than that put for­ward by many ma­jor gam­ing out­lets lo­cat­ed in the United States and Canada.

This is Just the Start

In writ­ing this, I’ve come to re­al­ize just what a di­vide there is be­tween the U.S. and Europe when it comes to fo­cus on big, com­plex GPU guz­zling 3D games on the PC plat­form. That is an­oth­er fac­tor in the di­vide of glob­al gamers and de­vel­op­ers and an­oth­er an­gle the gam­ing press can’t quite get its head around. These stu­dios de­vel­op for a do­mes­tic au­di­ence as well as an in­ter­na­tion­al one but dif­fer­ent parts of the world con­sume and play games dif­fer­ent­ly. This can lead to games be­ing over­looked by the press or peo­ple are left not quite know­ing how to cat­e­go­rize them.  One thing is sure though, these de­vel­op­ers and oth­er stu­dios are not go­ing any­where but up in the fu­ture. As we see the ex­pan­sion of gam­ing be­com­ing spread world­wide, more and more games and voic­es are sure to come from un­ex­pect­ed places. And I great­ly look for­ward to it.

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John Sweeney

John Sweeney is a ter­ri­bly British man with a back­ground in en­gi­neer­ing. He writes long-form ed­i­to­r­i­al con­tent with analy­sis of gam­ing, games me­dia and in­ter­net cul­ture. He also does the oc­ca­sion­al video game ret­ro­spec­tive with a week­ly col­umn about Magic the Gathering thrown in for good mea­sure. He also does most of our in­ter­views for some rea­son, we have no idea why. A staunch sup­port­er of free speech and con­sumer rights; skep­ti­cal of agen­da dri­ven me­dia and sus­pi­cious of un­ac­cou­table au­thor­i­ty but al­ways hope­ful for change.