of energy on a particular task, but also then need some downtime to recover, and then go back into something, you know, the following week. I think that that is quite typical of video game creation. “It definitely sums up who we are and the culture that


we’re creating. We don’t like lots of bureaucracy. We don’t like lots of rules. We love the idea of creating an environment where really talented people can do really great work. I think that I’ve found in my journey of being a leader, one of the best ways to do that is just to clear things out of the way so that people can really do their best work.”


SETTING FORTH It’s been more than a decade since ForthStar’s founders last ventured forth, so to speak, to try to establish an innovative new development studio. Not nearly long enough to suggest that they no longer have what it takes to succeed (assuming that it’s possible to lose such skills), but long enough to be reentering territory that might have been rendered unfamiliar by the passing of time. Gouge admits a lot has changed, citing the evolution


of the App Store as a prime example, but, he says, on the development side of things, “A lot of the tools and tech are so much easier now than they were then. Historically we chose to always build our own game engine and I think now that is a less sensible move. There are definitely some scenarios where building your own game engine makes sense, but the accessibility of tools and tech and client- side game development has improved immeasurably - even more so the back end. “I remember early on in Playdemic, we were still using


three-tier architecture service environments that involved us making big capital commitments to co-locate our servers in ISPs. That world is so far removed from the reality that we’re in now. The ability to scale things up in AWS or Azure or Google is incredible. I marvel at these data factories you can now tap into and just spin things up.” One of the marvels of Golf Clash, says Gouge, was


that a very small group of people who were arguably in the wrong city in the wrong country (Manchester), were able to build such success. “A lot of that was obviously down to the talent and to the people that made it, but another big piece of it was down to the technology, you know? The ability for Apple and Google to let us market a product and to take revenue from the globe, or the ability for AWS to give us this infrastructure for processing 100 million people without any kind of issue or costing a disproportionate amount of money. I think all of that technology has really transformed the access point for


December/January 2024 MCV/DEVELOP | 21


video games to come to market. The one thing that has changed for the worse in some respects is the ecosystem for user acquisition. As is well documented, the change that Apple made and Google is making means that the once highly predictable operation of user acquisition is now a much more challenging marketplace and probably more akin to the marketplace of maybe 13 years ago, where you didn’t have all the tools that were that were so powerful during the heyday of user acquisition on mobile.” ForthStar Games doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to get


its first title out, which isn’t surprising given everything that’s been said so far. The team is still being assembled and the ideas are still being worked through. “We’ve got an idea right now that we currently love


and we’re building it and we will then start to test it. We will be absolutely, completely unemotional when we get that feedback. If we don’t get the responses that we think warrant that product continuing, then it will be killed. In that sense, it’s very hard for us to put any kind of date on [a game] but in terms of the energy and endeavour, we will be continuing to prototype ideas that we think are worthy of becoming a full product.” Watch this space, as they say.


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