Fri 22 Jan 2010
Divide By Zero’s James Portnow recently visited Brazil to scope out the game industry and whipped up an excellent analysis for Gamasutra.
Having visited Brazil recently myself (to keynote at the annual SBGames conference), I share many of the same observations and conclusions. Though, sadly, I wasn’t able to make it out to the Oi Futura Nave school.
Of all the challenges and obstacles listed (ie, piracy, taxes, lack of funding, etc), the most potent problem in my opinion is a complete mismatch of creative vision and business opportunity.
As James mentioned, “game makers in Brazil expect to jump in and start making AAA experiences like those they play.” Indeed, it was amazing how many indie/amateur/student developers I met who wanted to create the next Halo, WoW or GTA.
I kept telling them to stop looking towards America/the West for inspiration, and rather look to Korea. While the variables/conditions were obviously different, Korea had similar challenges. And yes, perhaps more so through business innovation, the industry evolved and prospered.
There are many opportunities to be had in Brazil right now, in spite of the current obstacles. It’s just hard to see them when you’re trying to code up your epic Halo killer idea.
January 22nd, 2010 at 10:42 am
Brazil, it’s like Argentina without the Argentines…
Seriously though, BsAs doesn’t really have that problem so much, most folks here have been making flash and mobile games since the industry began. The impetus is toward more independent control of the revenue model, instead of work-for-hire it’s creating some kind of multiplayer online dealie, or whatever is fashionable these days… Facebook games, ect.
I’ve got a lot of hope for this place once the next generation of people, kids in their late teens/early 20s instead of mid 20s, basically, decide they don’t want to work for any large companies and instead start making whatever they want on practically zero budget. That’s when you’re going to see something interesting happen, and I suspect the same is true for Brazil. In Latin American cultures the vibe is very different regarding living with your parents, not to mention the cultural attitude toward art. There is a stronger inherent aversion toward the tech company vibe, more for the virtual office made of of an ad-hoc network of coffee shops.
February 4th, 2010 at 7:05 am
James’ article was spot on about the game market situation in Brazil. I think you got the developer part of it better, though.
It’s funny you should say “look to Korea for inspiration”. I met with a quite interesting group of koreans, malaysians and phillipines last GDC, all of them making some sort of business in Brazil. LevelUp! Games, from the phillipines, published many korean online games very successfully in brazil.
February 5th, 2010 at 1:15 pm
There is something else that differentiates Brazil from Asia countries. It is ability to bring out something new as oppose to taking someone’s else bits and pieces. One of the “latest” examples is the world-wide success of LUA scripting language in use for games. It is a Brazilian invention that dates back to the 80s. Quite recently a Singaporean company called Creative Labs used it when releasing development kit for their media players. I am using it and it does the job very well, unfortunately there is no direct benefit or credit to Brazil for LUA.