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A Swift Spotlight: Antstream Arcade
Reuniting users with some of the industry titans of the past, Antstream Arcade is a free-to-play, cloud-based game streaming platform, and the largest licensed collection of retro games in the world. A marriage of videogame history and future, the platform boasts over 3000 titles that can be enjoyed in their original format or in Antstream’s newly developed ‘challenge modes’.
discuss Antstream Arcade’s consistent increase in scope and ambition, with the goal to archive and modernise gaming history as technology grows exponentially. “There’s no way that cloud gaming isn’t the future of mass market entertainment.” says Mike. “So for us that’s great because we’re sitting on the bleeding edge of technology, but at the same time, we’re able to essentially bring the history of gaming with us.”
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Antstream Arcade was brought to realisation in 2016, inspired by practicality and passion. “CEO Steve Cottam had a vision for a gaming platform that served games in the cloud” says Mike. “He wanted to approach it from a very sensible way, rather than taking on heavy GPU reliant games that we have with the current generation, he wanted to take on something that he really enjoyed; retro games.”
Curating an extensive library of titles ranging from the most iconic to the very obscure is no small task. The process of converting cartridge to cloud involves multiple obstacles, including tracking down licence rights, Mike mentions. “There’s a lot of investigation work involved in tracking down the licence owners of these games. It’s amazing how many licences are lost over time, but for us, it was really important that everything you play is licensed. Some of these games live in the hands of private collectors. It’s an ongoing mammoth effort, but through this acquisition we are also uncovering videogame history which is incredibly exciting.”
“One of the most thrilling things about being part of the company is the amount of things that you can not just have an opinion on, but also help effect in all aspects of the business.”
ith an ever-expanding catalogue comes the necessity for an expanding studio. Aardvark Swift caught up with studio head Mike Rouse to
Once the licence rights are obtained, Antstream’s developers can get to work on a deepdive into the game’s code. “ We have an investigation phase, where we go into the game and see what’s been exposed and what we can handle. We make sure it’s stable, doesn’t crash and performs as everyone would expect” says Mike. When a thorough understanding of the code and a stable port has been established, development can begin on Antream’s unique challenge features. Mike continues, “We integrate a competition layer where, aside from leaderboards and achievements, we essentially take the game and hack it, changing some of the parameters and allowing users all new ways to play and compete with some of their favourite titles. We’ve got some really talented engineers that do this as some of it is extremely hard to manipulate.” Talented individuals are at the backbone of Antstream’s close-knit team of just under 30 people. “Because of the size of the studio, there’s a huge amount of ownership in our roles”, Mike emphasises. “One of the most thrilling things about being part of the company is the amount of things that you can not just have an opinion on, but also help effect in all aspects of the business.” While the team may be small at present, the studio has substantial expansion plans for the immediate future, with no intention of losing that individual ownership for their developers. “We’re expecting to grow quite significantly as we go into 2022 and 2023” Mike mentions. “There’s a plethora of roles that we’re going to be filling out to expand and gamify our platform. We’re also planning on adding games all the way to the 2000’s to Antstream Arcade, so we’re looking to add programmers and engineers of varying specialisations to our team.”
You can listen to Aardvark Swift’s full conversation with Antstream Arcade’s Mike Rouse through the Aardvark Swift Podcast, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, third-party apps, and the
aswift.com website.
Mike Rouse, Studio Head
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