Indie development is one of the faces of videogames that is taking every time more attention from different kinds of players, and without a doubt, the growth in the number of studios of this type is becoming exponential, however this situation isn’t really the same at a full global scale. This intends to be the first of several articles and interviews on the subject in some countries around the world. The first of these interviewees is WASD Studio. This is a Mexican origin studio with little time of existence, but with a trajectory that seems to aim at some very ambitious projects. The members of the team have been in different studios around that country, such as Slang Studio and Kaxan. They were present at GDC last month, and are also inside the Playstation's Developer Incubation program for LatAm. I interviewed the CEO and co-founder of WASD, Fabian Hernandez, so he could talk to us about the plans and experiences his team has had so far.
DownloadChocolate: Thank you very much for your time, Fabian; so let’s jump right in the subject! What year was WASD studio founded?
Fabian Hernandez: Wasd was founded in 2012 and legally stablished in 2013.
DC: What was the main motivation for you and your team for creating the studio?
FH: What motivated us was the idea of making videogames on our own, and making a business with sustainable and organic growth.
DC: In order to achieve what you have so far, what were the processes that you had to go through to build the company?
FH: The idea was always to create a company and a formal business from the top, and to do that, we had to go through the standard legal paperwork to make any company, the elementary part was the formalization of the company and making it being recognized by Hacienda (IRS in Mexico), and also, register the trademark as well.
DC: How did you guys manage to get financing for the studio?
FH: We wanted to make a sustainable business since this started, that’s why the studio has two divisions: projects for clients and development of our own content. At first we made a small investment and worked enough so that the company could sustain itself as fast as possible.
DC: How many people are involved in the team and what’s the structure of it?
FH: We’re five people working full-time for now, and on some projects, we’ve hired freelancers, so the team can be composed by 13 people at best. This is of course, counting only for development, no legal department or accounting.We made positions in the structure of the team for outside-company communication purposes only. Inside, we don’t use them. Everybody can participate, organize and comment on new projects.
DC: So this means the team is divided in areas, not ranks?
FH: Everybody has a specialty; we evaluate strong skills and weak points of each individual so we assign tasks in a way everyone can gain experience in their weakest skills.
DC: That sounds pretty good. I think few studios in Mexico actually devote some time to think of ideas to favor most of the team. Now, there is a constant debate going on about using an in-house engine or a commercial one. Would you guys want and/or could make your own technology?
FH: We don’t think it’s possible because of the resource and time investment this means. I think there are already very good tools that you can use to make agile development, and besides, the industry seems every time more open to make tools that anyone can use.
DC: Could you tell us about your next projects?
FH: We’re currently working on an already announced title: “PLANE” and other two multi-platform casual games still unannounced.
DC: I had a few questions regarding Cochi, the game you developed for iOS and Blackberry, but some were already covered on a previous interview on the site: http://blackberrydeveloper.mx/cochi-application/ but I still had a question left: What were the creative and technical challenges you had in the making of Cochi?
FH: Cochi was a very old idea from one of our team members and was specifically designed for the contest Reto BB10. From there, we realized it did build great expectations among the audience, and that’s why we decided to keep improving and developing the game. We had to land a few ideas for design that we didn’t think of at the very beginning. The controls were something we worked on several times from scratch with different approaches (gestures, accelerometers, combinations, etc.) and porting it to different platforms.
DC: We know you are part of the Playstation's Developer Incubation program for LatAm. What was the screening process? Did Playstation specifically find you?
FH: We had the interest for entering since we saw their website and we applied. I’m not familiar with their internal screening and approval processes, though. The industry is showing interest in new development markets and want to drive all this forward. I believe that any team with an interesting proyect can succeed.
DC: What has been your experience using Playstation devkits? Can you tell us anything about it?
FH: We’re still quite new on the matter and since we’re still starting to be working with them, we don’t have that much experience to share by now.
DC: What other technologies (hardware and software) have you experienced for game development and what did you think of them?
FH: We've experimented with Oculus, Leap Motion, Kinect, among others and software like Unity an most recently, UE4, we've combined some technologies in order to build prototypes. I believe crowdfunding has allowed to develop new tech that can be used in the videogame industry to create new and unique experiences for the players.
DC: What advantages and disadvantages has Mexico offered for you to make videogames?
FH: I don't see many advantages, it's just that the market is new in the country, and in itself, videogame development is a hard business and very competitive around the world. The disadvantage would have to be finding devs, since their number in Mexico is very small.
DC: What would you change in these circumstances to make a difference in the mexican videogame industry?
FH: To open up the channels of communication among studios. We're planning to offer free courses towards interested people within all areas of production.
DC: This sounds a rather ambitious project. Would you do this so you could eventually hire these people or are you just trying to train them? Are these courses going be online or on-site?
FH: They will be on-site, and we think that generating more knowledge in the country benefits everyone. The way to apply to one of the jobs here at WASD is via e-mail, and every person willing to attend the courses may or may not want to apply to a job position here, the only thing is that we'll check that the attendees have a basic knowledge as background so they can understand the subject a lot better.
DC: I thank you again for the time given to us for this interview, Fabian. We really wish to see all these objectives acomplished so we can interview you again to see new results.
FH: Thank you.
I'd say Mexico has a misterious, yet rather interesting face to show for game development. Despite all the mexican studios ever born and died in these last ten years in a commercial landscape, there are teams with innovating ideas that can bring up very valuable elements. If it's possible to make an increase of growth in this area, more jobs would be created in the field in this country. As Fabian says, the number of developers is still very reduced in this country and more training is needed.
For all those wanting to play WASD's Cochi, below you can find the links where you can download the game for free in various mobile platforms:
(For Blackberry):
http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/43769889/?lang=es&countrycode=MX
(For Windows Phone):
http://www.windowsphone.com/en-us/store/app/cochi/a3dd0e77-6503-410e-bd33-3bfcaec257ca
(For iOS -iPhone and iPad-):
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cochi/id829307591?mt=8&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
NOTE: All images were obtained from http://wasdstudio.com/main
Stay tuned for more interviews and articles in the upcoming months!
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