We are a multinational start-up company called Interzone Entertainment with combined creative talent in studios in Brazil, China, Australia, and the U.S. .
We have created Interzone Futebol, a PC MMOG currently in closed Alpha testing. The game will launch in 4Q08 in Portuguese for the soccer-centric Brazilian market, closely followed by an international version.
We chose Brazil as our first market for several reasons:
? Football / soccer is a national passion in Brazil so we knew their avid support of the game would make them an enthusiastic market.
? The best way to produce a quality game is to create it for an educated audience, and since the average Brazilian knows soccer so well, we knew that during the upcoming Beta testing, they would pick up on even the slightest problem regarding authenticity or the accuracy and “fun level” of gameplay.
? The Brazilian futebol market demographic of male, 18-35, is a solid match with our game’s target audience. We think it’s a natural “fit.”
Interzone Futebol is a virtual world centered on the game of futebol which is the most popular sport in the world. The first city in our virtual world is Rio de Janeiro, and other international cities will be added over time.
We licensed the Big World Technology suite because we had previous experience working with this engine. We also licensed several middleware components – it let us focus on game play rather than re-developing technology that we can license or services we can contract. Our partners include SpeedTree, fmod, LiveGamer, Umbra, and ScaleForm.
We have several goals for Interzone Futebol:
- It must be a realistic and respectfully-designed game of soccer.
- We not only followed FIFA rules to the greatest possible extent, but we have on staff several former national futebol players to be sure we do things right.
- It must have social aspects in our virtual world, so we created a stylized world outside the stadium where players and non-players can taste the beach life of Rio, shop, meet friends in social gatherings, and enjoy the club scene.
- The game had to have a strong community. Since an online game is more of a service than a product; our focus on supporting the community will help us make a better game over time.
- The experience had to be fun.
Another differentiator is that Interzone Futebol is the first 11-a-side multiplayer game and the first where each player – including the goal keepers – is controlled by a real person, rather than a mindless AI teammate.
We started developing Interzone Futebol two years ago, and now that we’re approaching the announcement of our Beta test, we can’t wait to get feedback from the masses!
Challenges with a Multinational Dev Team
Interzone Entertainment has the perfect mix of team members from diverse cultures and backgrounds, all focused on creating a fun and realistic virtual world soccer MMOG. We have assembled professionals from the games and film industries, business executives, Ph.D. students, futebol fans, specialist consultants, contractors, and partners in our studios around the world.
One of the early challenges was setting up communications protocols so team members speaking English, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Portuguese could communicate easily and efficiently. It took a little juggling, but those protocols are now in place.
Another challenge we faced was creating a game that was culturally acceptable around the world. For example, we didn’t want to create a social situation in our virtual world which would be acceptable in Western cultures, but would be offensive in Eastern cultures. That problem was solved at the outset because we employ at our four studios people who live on four continents and have experience living in multiple cultures. To solve the gender issue, players will be able to choose a male or female avatar, and the sex of the character doesn’t impose limits on players’ abilities to progress in the game.
Our studio in Perth, Western Australia, is home to about 50 experienced developers, and since we share English as a common language with our headquarters in Chicago, it was easy to integrate these groups into a cohesive team. We opened a Sao Paulo studio to create the localized version in Portuguese.
The most important thing when you set up a studio in a new country is your first key hires. For our Sao Paulo studio we found our GM and Marketing VP who had major experience in fortune 500 companies operating in Brazil. Once you make a few key hires, you rely on the network and experience of your staff to organically grow your studio. Since the game development community in Sao Paulo is just getting started, it took a little time to grow the team to around 20 staff.
The people that we have hired, we are extremely happy with, and it is great to have the team in Brazil integrated into the global development of our title. The team in Alphaville [Brazil] is constantly in communication with the other studios, and we even fly groups from one country to another, to collaborate face to face and build strong relationships that speed up development through the rest of the cycle.
Interzone Entertainment is currently in discussions with major publishing partners in China. We are also talking with a number of other vendors and suppliers to make sure our launch in China is successful.
The decision to open our art and QA studio in China was made based on our success and experience from a previous venture there, and was included in our very first draft of a business plan. The founders’ previous game company had a studio and offices in Shanghai, however, IZ met several people from Guangzhou and Hong Kong during multiple game conferences and settled on that region this time around for the availability of qualified team members.
We had also known from the beginning that it would take some time to get the studio up and running. The registration process makes setting up a company in China a long and arduous task, but a lot of leg work and effort by our people pushed it through and now we have a fully functioning and productive team operation in Guangzhou.
Our vice president of China Operations, Jeff Lyndon, is Chinese who speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, and English fluently. His linguistic skill, combined with his extensive online game experience and contacts in China, and his recognized expertise as a pioneer in RMTs in China, are important driving factors in our Guangzhou studio success.
Our experience with personnel in China has been fantastic. Everyone is committed to the project, the staff is reliable, loyal, and they produce exceptional work. The team we have in Guangzhou right now is vital to the development and deployment of the game, and we look forward to expanding our operations there.
Summary
We believe Interzone Futebol -- the product of dev teams on four continents – has incredible potential to capture a vast new market of more mainstream players. Building a truly multiplayer online futebol game will captivate casual and hardcore players alike. Interzone Futebol will have its first showing at the Austin Game Developer Conference, September 16-17, 2008, in Booth #104.
We invite players to visit www.interzoneentertainment.com and www.interzonefutebol.com for more updates.
Contributors to this article:
Doug Mealy, Online Marketing and Public Relations, pr@interzoneentertainment.com
Mike Turner, vice president Business Development, Interzone Entertainment, mike.turner@interzonegames.com.
Greg Chadwell, executive vice president, Interzone Entertainment