The Challenges of Running a Game Studio in Mexico

Ricardo, CEO of Xibalba Studios, discusses the challenges and opportunities of running a game studio in Mexico.

You can download the podcast here…
http://www.indiegamepod.com/podcasts/cc-xibalba.mp3

Or listen to it here…

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Show Notes:
Interviewer: I’m here at the Casual Connect in Seattle, and with me today is a special guest. How about you introduce yourself?

Ricardo: OK. My name is Ricardo Villarreal. I’m the CEO of Xibalba Studios, a game company in Monterrey, Mexico.

Interviewer: OK. And what game are you working on right now, or what game have you worked on?

Ricardo: Yes. Well, we actually just finished our first full commercial game. It’s called Icebreakers. It’s a PC game, and it also has a flash game component in there that we can probably discuss later. And what we’re also working on is another game, but it still hasn’t been announced.

Interviewer: OK. Oh good. And this Icebreakers game, what is the game all about, and what inspired the idea?

Ricardo: The game is about a group of kids that have these custom built vehicles that have a little water tank in the back that shoots water and gets frozen immediately. So, this water creates a wall of ice. You can just use the wall of ice to make the other players crash on it. There’s different roles to this, but that’s the basic premise.

And also something very important is the characters. There’s a lot of racing games, but you’ve just got to look at the characters. Usually, you don’t relate much to them. We assign to them different characters in order to make it more appealing to people that like different characters.

Interviewer: And it’s also multi-playe, stuff like that. Can you talk about the design? And also, can you also talk about – did you prototype the game design or the game play? How did you go about actually making sure the game was going to be fun?

Ricardo: Yeah. Well, we created a demo a while ago. They’re just one level and tried different features first before we went and built the whole thing. Actually, you have to look more closely, obviously, until you find out it’s much better.

Interviewer: Now, you guys also developed your own engine initially for the game. So, you have your game engine, and then you’re also working on the game itself. That’s something that some indie game developers do. What ended up happening, and what suggestions do you have for other game developers who are trying to make their own game?

Ricardo: So, basically what happened when we started the company, we developed around an engine because I went to Digipen, it’s a game programming school and all the games we did there, we always built the engines ourselves. So, we were kind of used to that idea. I got into this in ’03. There weren’t that many good choices for engines. A lot of them were very expensive, you know, hundred thousand dollars, a half a million dollars.

There were a few open source, but they still lacked a lot of tools that we needed to actually make something decent. So, we just said, OK, let’s just get one of the engines from school and make it better.

Interviewer: Sure.

Ricardo: I think this is going to work out better than the open source stuff. And since we cannot afford the real expensive ones, so we started doing that. But then we created a prototype of a game and then we introduced it in 2006. Then, this game was in use with such and such features, and it was kind of complicated.

We also wanted console support. We didn’t have any console support, and so, like, oh, what should we do? So, that year we found this engine. It’s not very popular in the U. S. It’s called Vision. This one is from a company called Trinigy in Germany. It also is in U. S. in Austin. You know, it was a good option. It was an engine that we said, OK, this is going to solve all the problems.

We decided to start from scratch with a new project and just the engine, and that’s where Icebreakers came up. It came down to this. We had to decide if we were going to be a company that makes middleware or makes games. And we didn’t really get into this until we built those for people. So,we said, let’s just be a game company.

Interviewer: Yeah, because managing the engine actually almost takes more time than developing the game and stuff.

Ricardo: Yeah, you’re right. It’s like two different things. They’re similar things, but it’s two different areas. Most indie companies are really small and limited resources. I think it’s better to use all your effort and time to make the game better than to just try to invent the wheel again, that kind of thing.

Interviewer: Sure. So, you finish this game. It takes about three years to finish the game. So, you’re finally happy that you did it. What did you do after that? I mean, what was the next step to make sure that it succeeds? Also, were you working with an artist alongside it? Was everything else polished, or did you need then to find an artist after that?

Ricardo: No, since we were in Mexico, we couldn’t really find that many artists because the game industry is still in its early stages. So, we had to find some people that were good and just started training them. They kind of learned while we were making the games. So, that was also another long process, but these hadn’t made too many games.

Interviewer: The art looks pretty decent and the characters seem very detailed.

Ricardo: Yeah. Some of the details we had to redo them three times, but slowly we began fixing everything. And now, we’re pretty happy with the final version.

Interviewer: So now, you have this game out. How are you promoting it? How are you getting people to come to actually play the game?

Ricardo: OK. Well, our marketing has just been focused to find a publisher because especially last year it was terrible. It was difficult, but now things are looking up. Don’t expect a publisher to hold the market for you. You can do as much as you yourself, so we did feature in different media. We’re one of the few companies in Mexico that are doing games.

So, last week I was interviewed by CNN in Spanish. So, yeah, that was great. I got exposure from the U. S. all the way to Argentina, in all of the countries where Spanish is spoken.

Interviewer: Well, you also mentioned – did you put a video on YouTube, or did you make any flash games or anything like that?

Ricardo: Yeah. We made a trailer last year. That’s something really basic if you’re doing an indie game. You have to have a really nice trailer because a lot of the people, you know, they have the portals or whatever. The video is like the caveat that gets them interested in your game plus you can have it in your iPhone or something. That’s your connection, like if I approach somebody and I want to show them what I do, it’s the easiest thing to get your iPhone or whatever you have and play your video. That’s like your best marketing tool ever.

Interviewer: And, what about the flash? You said you made a flash version of this game. Can you talk about that?

Ricardo: Well, some games are already doing this, and we give it some thought and we say, who can help market our game because… The Internet is a very noisy place. It’s hard to get noticed. I said, you know, these casual flash games, they get played by a lot of people. Some have like millions of plays. So, if I have a limited budget, who can I help market my PC game?

Let’s make a flash game and to help people be introduced to our game because if you have a new idea, it cannot hurt to make people get to know it, right? I said, how can we put it in the most visible place as possible? So, I said, let’s make a flash game, and, at least, we’ll give this one away for free. Or we can put ads or whatever.

Every two levels we’ll have a little reminder that if you like this and you want to get the full Icebreakers game, then touch this to buy the game. We have links directly to where you can buy the game, things like that. Those are a very good way to market the game.

Interviewer: Why even then have a downloadable if you have a flash version? Why not just nowpromote the flash version? It just seems like you can get more exposure on flash, using flash, and it’ll reach a lot more people than if you just try to promote the downloadable itself?

Ricardo: Well, it’s like a scenery game, you know. One helps the other and also the other. So, it’s not going to hurt us to do it.

Interviewer: Did you put the flash game on portals and stuff?

Ricardo: Not yet. We’re going to do it once the game is for sale because some of these games are really popular when they’re first released, and then after that people just get bored and find something else. So, we’re going to wait until the PC is ready, like, into stores. We’re probably going to publish the flash at that moment.

Interviewer: Any other marketing things that you’ve been doing besides flash and the videos?

Ricardo: Well, there’s a lot of things that you can do. There’s always social medias.

Interviewer: And is that something you’re pursuing, the social media stuff?

Ricardo: Yeah, but it’s complicated and it takes a lot of energy and effort. But it’s something that you have to do, and there’s other things you can do. Try to get the press involved. That’s important. Make friends with the press and that kind of thing.

Interviewer: OK. So, now that you’ve done that game, what are you going to do differently now for your future games, based on what you’ve learned through that whole experience?

Ricardo: Well, we learned basically the market is tough. So, we’re looking for other options. I think the iPhone, for example, looks very appealing. So, we’re starting to look into other options. We’re going to talk here with the folks from Google and they’re going to have something like an App Store in the Chrome browsers.. There’s going to be a new market there.

There’s lots of new options, so just try to find where you think your game is going to do the best and just go ahead and try to be one of the first ones before it gets too crowded.

Interviewer: How do you like development in Mexico? What’s been that experience, and what are your thoughts on that?

Ricardo: Well, it’s been great. But it’s going slowly because not too many people are dong it but a lot of them are interested. Actually, we’ve been in some Expos Half of the people that come to it… That’s been really cool because people, they just want to learn how to make games. So, there’s really a lot of interest.
People want to do this, but there’s not enough people in order to make games, to teach them. Hopefully, that’s going to change, maybe. A lot of the schools are starting to pay more attention. We’re actually helping some schools with their curriculum to teach games and things like that.

Interviewer: Where can people find out more information about your game and, maybe, even play the game? What’s the site?

Ricardo: Yeah. Well, our company’s website is XibalbaStudios.com.

Interviewer: OK.

Ricardo: That’s spelled X-I-B-A-L-B-A Studios.com.

Interviewer: So, I’ll recite that. That’s X-I-B-A-L-B-A Studios.com.

Ricardo: Yeah. And the game is Icebreakers-game.com. And the flash game I was talking to you about, it’s IcebreakersMini.com.

Interviewer: OK. So, IcebreakersMini.com.

Ricardo: Yes. That’s it. That’s the flash game, and our PC game is Icebreakers-game.com.

Interviewer: Thank you.