That sounds like something you expected. I don’t really expect support I have to say. I’m not really sure that anyone really gets hand outs these days. It’s up to me to make it work to be honest.
So, why did you leave Jagex? I just wanted to continue this idea. We left on friendly terms and I really wanted to pursue it and focus my energy and see if I could make it work or not. It’s been sitting in the back of my mind, half there for the last ten years, and I kept trying to come back to it, chipping away at it, and I couldn’t quite solve it. Eventually I sort of had a breakthrough and finally managed to sort out what I was trying to do, and did just that.
I see a lot of iPhone games where they
would have made a profit if only they hadn’t spent so much
making them. Andrew Gower, Fen Research
Fen Research’s casual turn-based strategy game has been designed in part to showcase the outfit’s programming language’s development potential
And this technology, will you be selling it, or keeping it as a proprietary tech? I intend on letting other developers use this. I think we’ll probably have a number of licensing models. I’d offer this to smaller coders; hobbyist and indie coders. But also I want to offer this to studios and the sort of licensing models you’d need are worlds apart.
So it’s not just Indies you’ll be looking at? We’ll start off looking at indies because it’s immediate. Big studios tend to have large support requirements. But ultimately once it has proved itself it can be used to develop just about anything.
How’s Fen Research being funded, with you owning 90 per cent and Jagex owning ten per cent? For the moment I’m funding it myself. I’m deliberately keeping it small and I’m working on a cautious basis, so it may take me quite some time to get this thing finished. I want to be able to keep funding it, and I don’t want to run out of money, which is why I’ve kept it small.
What has it been like starting a new company? How would you compare it to founding Jagex? I’ve really enjoyed it to be honest with you and I’m really happy that I did it. It’s so
exciting to be doing something new and innovative. OK, it might not work, but hopefully it will. Certainly it’s really fun to try. It’s not been too challenging because
obviously I know roughly what sort of things I’m going to face this time around. In that way it is much easier than when I started Jagex, which was a colossal challenge.
What advice would you give to new start-ups looking to break into games or middleware? I would certainly say try and keep your costs down. I see a lot of iPhone games where they would have made a profit if only they hadn’t spent so much making them. Try and get people who are enthusiastic about what it is you are doing. You don’t want to just get someone who’s sees this as a nine- to-five job; those people who come in and they work but they have no enthusiasm. They’ve got to have passion in what they’re making. Everyone’s got to have a good time whilst they’re doing it too. Within the games industry that does affect the final product.
Do you feel the UK is supportive of start-ups? I haven’t had a great deal of specific support. We get a slightly lower corporation tax, but that’s irrelevant because we’ve not making any money as a start-up. I wouldn’t say we’ve had a great deal of support.
So it was about getting the right freedom? Yes, and without the distraction of a massive project like RuneScape that demanded a lot of attention. It was almost impossible to not get sucked
into it working on that alone every waking hour because it’s such a big project.
Obviously Jagex is behind RuneScape, and some say they’re finding it hard to do anything else but RuneScape. Is that fair? I can’t really comment on that to be honest.
When do you expect to be releasing the engine and your first games? I hope to be getting our first game out this year. It might be slip into next year as I’m a perfectionist about it. The engine itself will be further down the line, but I don’t want to release that until it’s ready. We don’t want to have people start making games with it and then we realise we need to change everything, or it will start annoying people. Also, people are going to judge this
technology harshly. I know the initial reaction will be ‘why on Earth do you need another engine, why are you reinventing the wheel?’. So it’s got to be just right; it needs to be self-apparent why it exists. It’s ready when it’s ready.
08| JUNE 2012
THIS MONTH: Square Enix’s Luminous Studio engine Chromativity’s Adidas miCoach Quantum Conundrum’s Geomerics-powered lighting