Wednesday, 16 December 2009 15:51
ESG had the pleasure to speak to Anthony De Sa Ferreira who is the Business Developer Director for Golgoth Studio. Currently Golgoth is working on a remake to the arcade classic Toki which was originally released back in 1989. Throughout the interview we will get the details on the development of this classic revival as well as get the info on their second...
ESG had the pleasure to speak to Anthony De Sa Ferreira who is the Business Developer Director for Golgoth Studio. Currently Golgoth is working on a remake to the arcade classic Toki which was originally released back in 1989. Throughout the interview we will get the details on the development of this classic revival as well as get the info on their second project to follow the Toki remake, Caveman Ninja: Joe & Mac. This will be part 1 of a 2 part interview with Golgoth Studio.
ESG: Please share with our readers what your role is at Golgoth Studio?
Anthony De Sa Ferreira : You know when you are a small Team you often do many different things. Currently in Golgoth Studio, I’m the producer on Toki and Joe & Mac remake. I’m the link between fans and Press relation. I’m the Business development director and I manage the Marketing (website, youtube, facebook, Blog , twiiter) So I think you’ll understand that I don’t sleep a lot ;-) but it’s really interesting to work like that and I’m in contact with everybody so I know everything that happens in Golgoth Studio.
ESG: For our readers who have yet to hear about the fabulous work at Golgoth Studio, please share with us the humble beginnings of the company.
Anthony De Sa Ferreira: First thanks for the Fabulous work :-) , About the beginning of the company , the story begin after losing my job during the financial Crisis, I was looking for a new one. But the time was not really good for that. So during those months my days were focused on searching for a new job and study the game market the rest of the time.
When I seen the success meet by the retrogames and 2D games, I decided to do my Hobby, my news Job, so as I already knew Philippe Dessoly skills in Art Design, I thought that the Digital platform could be a great opportunity for us. So I contacted him and explained my idea about creating an independent video game studio for Digital Platforms. He was really excited by the project.
After getting the green light of Philippe my other concern was to find an old game which we knew could be welcomed by old and new players alike. After some days of research and talk with my twin brother, we thought that Toki could be a good idea to start. Choosing the Game was difficult because as you can guess we’ll get only one try. So I talked to Philippe about the concept of Toki remake and he told us about the work he had done long time ago of the Amiga Version! And so i immediately knew that Toki will be the Good choice.
Next step was to get started to work on this Toki remake. I was in contact with Philippe during summer of 2008, he made the character Design of the new version and we started to work seriously in September 2008.
As it was impossible for me to pay Philippe each month due our small capital, so i made an agreement with him based on Royalties. And the deal was half of his time he work for himself to gain money and other half time he work on the Toki remake. That explains why the development has been so long.
Anthony De Sa Ferreira: Yes it’s true, we are fans of classic titles because it was a crazy time for video games industry where everything was better and better , games after games. You know we have been playing since we were little boys and now we are 30 years old. So classic game is a big part of our gamers life :-). To be honest when I was a little boy I played Arcade Games in commercial Center while I would wait for my parentsJ. It was the time of coins and credit! At this time, our favorite Arcade games, was wonderboy, shinobi, Toki, street fighter 2 and two others games that I forgot the names of :’(
But the game I perfectly remember even if it’s not a classic game was Golden Axe Warrior on Master System. I don’t know why but this game made me and my twin brother crazy when we were children.
ESG: Currently the company is working on an HD remake of Toki, what was the inspiration of behind bringing back this old gem back to life?
Anthony De Sa Ferreira: Our first Target and challenge when we started to work on Toki was to be as close as possible to a Cartoon and also not using tiles system. We are trying to bring something really unique in this version. We try to modernize the vision of what could be 2D Games on Next Gen consoles.
ESG: Resurrecting classic titles has been quite popular thanks to digital distribution. Most remakes now are translated to 3D instead of 2D. Why did the studio choose to go 2D instead of the ever so popular 3D format?
Anthony De Sa Ferreira: We think 2D allows us to keep the original spirit of the game and at the same time propose something modern. We are not interested in using a 3D format because it’s popular, but in the case of Toki we knew we could bring something more interesting, so it was not necessary. I’m confident to say that players will better appreciate this 2D version of Toki than if we had used 3D.
Anthony De Sa Ferreira: Digital distribution is a complicated topic. In your question you said smaller titles, It was true at the beginning but not really now… You said Digital Platform helps developers, My opinion is also a little different, I think it’s much more developers who help digital platform (Game content) to met the success they know today.
About the benefits of digital platform, it’s easy to see the benefits of working directly with first party publishers. Because of digital platforms new waves of original and great games such as Castle Crasher, Braid, Splosion man, Joe Danger, can simply be released. All these games brought these last few years a wind of fresh and new games IP’s into the Digital industry. (Joe danger is not release yet)
But now it becomes more difficult when you are a small team to release your game even on digital platform due to the recent interest of big studios. Microsoft seems to be harder in their choices of XBLA game Approval.
** Stay tuned tomorrow for part 2 when we will get more in depth info on both Toki & Caveman Ninja: Joe & Mac.**
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