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What
do the game players in your country like? Is there any "gaming culture"
there? Action games prevail here. There are plenty of Quake fans, Doom fans, even Diablo fans. Sport games are very popular, particularly NHL and FIFA by EA Sports, of which the annual updated release never fails to sell more than 5,000 copies. Adventure games are also exceedingly popular here. As this type of game is virtually dead in the West, original Czech versions are sold here. It is important to note for foreign game designers wishing to enter our gaming market that about 99 percent of the computers in our country are PCs. Computer users in the USA might find this interesting because in the States, Macintosh is very popular. Here, however, it is only used by certain graphics studios. There
are several magazines on PC gaming published here. The largest one is
The Level (published by the
German Vogel Publishing), with 46,000 copies. The Score is published by Art Consulting, with 44,000 copies, and
The Game Star (German IDG), is published
with 25,000 copies. The Excalibur
(the first PC gaming magazine published in this country, although for
the last couple of years it has survived with only some difficulty), with
a reported 20,000 copies, publishes only a few issues annually. Additionally,
there are the Slovakian Riki
and The Player, with editions of between 8–10,000
copies. Playstation consoles are experiencing a huge boom in the Czech
and Slovak Republics, with about 55,000 already sold, which has led to
an official Playstation magazine in the Czech language, with each edition
being about 14 000 issues. This
abundance of magazines has even led to some promotional-type competition.
The magazines Level, Score,
and Game
Star, in an effort to garner more sales, decided to offer customers
free, full versions of certain computer games, as a bonus for buying their
second or third CD . Apart from many original Czech games, games such
as Spec Ops, Fallout I (translated into Czech), Ishar Trilogy, Die Hard Trilogy,and
Shogo, to name a few, were given away as free gifts. Viva Western
marketing practices! What
sort of game-development community is there in the Czech and Slovak Republics?
How do the developers learn and share ideas with one another? Are there
magazines, schools, conferences, or any other ways of learning about the
industry and meeting other game developers? Individual
development teams are very introverted, and towards others they behave
as though towards a competitor. Not everybody has realized yet that we
do not compete with one another, but that our real competitors are the
top foreign studios such as Gathering of Developers, Shiny, and Lionhead,
among others. No meetings are being organized, and we meet other members
of our community mostly at E3 and ECTS. We do discuss various issues on
discussion forums on Internet, but everybody guards their production processes
relatively closely. Naturally,
there are universities offering information and computer science as subjects,
and they provide very good basis for programming in practice. However,
our university professors regard computer games as something inferior.
Luckily, students do like to play computer games in their hostels, and
many of them try to create them as well, thus taking their first steps
into the world of game development. As
far as magazines are concerned, there is The Pixel magazine for graphics and media,
and there are educational series published for programmers in magazines
such as The Chip or The PC Magazine. These series are so stretched
out, however, that they are nearly useless. I cannot imagine any programmer
learning in installments, every month absorbing a mere two pages. In
the past there was very good Amiga scene; indeed, twice a year the users
of this computer would meet, and these events would draw at least a couple
of hundred of people. There also used to be competitions organized for
the best demo, music or picture. New programs used to be demonstrated,
and so forth. But all of this disappeared around 1996, when even the most
devoted fans of Amiga realized that the future of computers was the PC. Currently,
a PC conference, called Fiasko, is held by developers of demo programs
once a year. Usually, about a hundred of people attend, and about twenty
reasonably developed demos are shown there. However, most information
regarding developments is gleaned from various foreign newsgroups via
the Internet, or directly from Microsoft. What
software tools are the developers in your country using? Simply
the standard ones, just like any other development team in the world:
C++, 3D Studio Max, Lightwave, Photoshop, and so on. We create in Microsoft
Windows 98 and NT, and we use MS Word, Excel and Project for planning.
Naturally, we have to create our own editors, which we use for the actual
structure of the game.
Currently, we are considering beginning use of some special middleware for the application of physics into our games. JRC and Illusion Softworks own their own motion capture, which we plan to fully utilize in our new games. What are your country’s most significant contributions to the gaming world to date? What contributions do you expect your country will make to the game development industry in the future? It is impossible to mention any game other than Hidden and Dangerous, simply because it is the only game that was successful abroad. I am convinced that this was not the result of chance. Rather, its success reflects traditional Czech capability and perseverance. If I could talk about other kinds of games that might one day be successful, I would mention perhaps entering into licensing agreements with our hockey players in the NHL, namely Jaromir Jagr and Dominik “The Dominator” Hasek. I believe that in future, Czech and Slovak game development teams will succeed to an even greater degree than they have so far, and that our computer games will make history. That is my greatest wish, and one I am confident is not too far from being fulfilled. Petr Vochozka, 24, is the managing director and co-owner of Illusion Softworks, an independent software development company founded in 1997. His responsibilities at Illusion include everything from management to game programming and production. Illusion lists Hidden and Dangerous as its biggest hit to date, of which a sequel is forthcoming, and is currently working on some hush-hush projects for the new Sega Dreamcast. He lists his hobbies as his girlfriend, traveling, and watching old black and white movies, in no particular order. Petr may be reached at petr@illusionsoftworks.com, and encourages correspondence from anyone interested in learning more about his country’s gaming industry, as well as from those with Levi’s Jeans for sale or trade.
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