IGDA Toronto Chapter Game Developer Studio Series: Phantom Compass

IGDA Toronto Chapter Game Developer Studio Series

 

By Rebecca Phoa

 

The IGDA Toronto Chapter Game Developer Studio Series is part of a new initiative launched by the IGDA Toronto Chapter to familiarize anyone with an interest in video games with Toronto game developers.

 

While Canada has such heavyweights as Bioware (Baldur’s Gate, Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO, Dragon Age Origins, and Mass Effect), and Ubisoft Montreal (Assassin’s Creed, Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia, Far Cry 2 and 3); Toronto has a vibrant independent game development scene, known for its tight knit community of dedicated game developers and game enthusiasts.

 

Toronto hosts a variety of video game developers specializing in PC, console, social/casual, educational, and online games. The IGDA Toronto Chapter is committed to connecting Toronto game developers with each other, and supporting the interests of the game development industry. We hope that this initiative will be another step towards contributing to the Toronto game development community to get to know its peers: the studios and people who make great video games possible.

 

Our debut article in this series features Phantom Compass.

 

Phantom Compass is a Toronto based independent game developer specializing in fun Flash games, alternate reality games, and serious games since 2008. Tony Walsh, Jos Yule, Ericka Evans, and Thomas Detko comprise the company’s core team whose total experience equals 35+ years in creative media. Phantom Compass has created games and interactive components for broadcasting clients including the CBC, TV Ontario, Canwest Broadcasting, and production companies like Six to Start, Xenophile Media and marblemedia. The founder Tony Walsh is a 15+ year veteran in interactive arts, whose multi-disciplinary background aids Phantom Compass in creating a wide range of games. From serious games to the just plain fun, Walsh is an occasional lecturer in games academia focusing on telling stories, pushing social concerns, and challenges in game development. Jos Yule is the Technical Director at Phantom Compass; his experience comprises 15+ years as a technologist. Ericka Evans works for Phantom Compass as a Producer. She previously worked for Falling Squirrel Productions, Silicon Knights, and TVOntario. Thomas Detko is an Associate Producer/Designer/Developer with a background in Web Development and Computer Graphic Design and a lifelong love of games. They recently launched Points4People, a playful interaction platform, currently in beta.
 

Here are a number of Phantom Compass’ games:

Greenville—a turn-based resource management game about building a sustainable / eco-friendly community.

Curio Cannon—a target-shooting game with funny physics.

Persuasion—a civic engagement game produced in association with TVO.

Save B Dangerous—an Alternate Reality Game aimed at an online game community to support the Hollywood film Bangkok Dangerous. This ARG was created for GGL.com.

From the left: Thomas Detko, Jos Yule, Ericka Evans, Tony Walsh

 

1. Please introduce yourselves and your company.

 

Phantom Compass is a Toronto-based game production company that works with independent producers (such as TV production companies) primarily on Flash-based games (we built 6 such games on YTV.com in the first half of this year); additionally we’re working on mobile and PC (desktop and browser) games using a variety of technologies.

 

We’re Tony Walsh (founder, chief creative and producer), Jos Yule (partner and chief technical), Ericka Evans (producer, writer, and director) and Thomas Detko (associate producer, designer, and developer).  We all wear multiple hats to span the entire game development gamut, and in addition to our core full time team, we also work with other in-house and contract creative and technical team members.

 

2. What are your educational backgrounds?

 

Tony completed Foundation Year at the Ontario College of Art and Design but dropped out afterwards and learned how to design games before schools taught such things.
 

Jos spent two years in Media Arts at Ryerson University before dropping out and also learned how to design games before school programs existed.
 

Ericka took one year of Interior Design at Ryerson University before changing her mind and completing her diploma in Media Arts at Sheridan College.
 

Thomas spent 3 years towards a B.A. in Film before dropping out but later earned a Web Design and Development Diploma from Ryerson University and a Computer Graphic Design Diploma from Herzing College.

 

3. What motivated all of you to get into game development?

 

Tony: I’ve had a lifelong passion for gaming starting with Pong and Dungeons & Dragons, but never dreamed I’d end up running a game company.  Jos and I used to build, play and modify tabletop games together in high school.  Again, no idea we’d be doing this as a team professionally some day.

Ericka: My parents have been the biggest gaming influence in my life.  Both poured their passion for games into me from Atari to Monopoly, Dungeons & Dragons to PS3.  After a successful start in children’s television, the games industry was a wonderful opportunity to continue to grow my career while doing something I love.

Thomas: Even before owning every console from Atari to Playstation 2 and putting countless hours into endless PC games I was a voracious pen and paper RPG gamer, usually in the role of game/dungeon master. I think a game master and game designer/developer have many similarities in terms of fashioning experiences for players. It’s a natural progression—as tool-sets keep evolving, we leave the old ones behind and move to the next ones. Although we do keep revisiting the old ones from time to time!

 

4. Are there areas in game development that Phantom Compass concentrates on? For example, do you want to tell stories, make people think and question; write perfect game AI, or build mind bending game levels?

 

We have paid our bills primarily by providing Flash game development services to other companies, but we prefer to do original game projects.  It’s always tough balancing service work (the work we must do) with original projects (the work we love to do).  We traditionally have built casual arcade-style games, but we’d probably rather be building deeper experiences, preferably with some kind of socially-productive outcome.  Oh, and a good business model never hurts.

 

5. As the founder of Phantom Compass, please give me a brief overview of your daily job responsibilities? For Ericka Evans—as Producer; for Jos Yule—as Technical Director; for Thomas Detko—as Associate Producer; what are your daily job responsibilities?

 

Tony: I probably have the most varied role, which includes business development and sales, business affairs, creative direction on most of our projects, executive producing most of our projects, proposal writing, marketing and PR, game design and often production chores such as visual design/graphics and writing.

Thomas: My role is also varied. In addition to liaising and networking on behalf of Phantom Compass at industry events, I have a broad range of experience that I bring to the table. My work day might consist of tasks in areas like graphic design, ActionScript 3 coding, web development and design, concept art, 3d modeling and texturing, game design, or writing. Ultimately I do what it takes to get the job done for our clients, but I also like to think of myself as an internal development “catalyst” (the rest of the team might have a different word for it ;p). I like to push the team because I really feel that the end user will have a lot of fun with the projects we have planned!

Ericka: I try to facilitate communication and make sure everyone has everything they need.  Day to day routines include Skype check-ins with team members, making, checking and fixing tickets (task trackers), playing updated builds to see/test progress, talking to clients about upcoming milestones and soliciting feedback on past ones.  I also work with Tony on budgeting and future planning.

Jos: Jos is kept too busy programming and overseeing projects from a technical and design standpoint to comment.

 

6. How do you address worker retention and satisfaction?

 

We’re a small team, so we try to keep in close contact and maintain a constant dialog between team members.  We each work out of our own home offices, which provide a lifestyle advantage--we meet in person every 2 - 3 weeks.  We’re all passionate and driven.  Most of all, we all love working with each other.  It’s a great mix of personalities and experience-levels, and that goes a long way to a good working environment.

 

7. I think that in any creative industry; people who are not *in* it seem to take an idealistic view of that type of work. They might say, ‘so you play games as a job’ but we all know that isn’t true. What would you say to people who want to get into the game industry so badly, but haven’t taken a rounded view of game development?

 

Tony: Anyone who wants to get into the games industry but doesn’t know anything about it in a practical sense is likely to receive a lot of rejection letters. If the industry “proper” is too hard to break into, there are always mod teams to join and an increasing number of DIY tools available to experiment with making games.

Thomas: I come across this very issue time and time again. If you aren’t involved in game communities (Source, XBLA, Flixel, Flashpunk, Unity, UDK and a million others) in some capacity (art, writing, programming, marketing, community relations, web etc), or if you don’t have a blog where you post game reviews or express thoughts about gaming in some way, if you don’t visit Gamasutra or some other game industry news site to educate yourself, if you don’t even know what companies are in your own city then you are really going to be at a disadvantage. People want to see initiative and commitment in addition to skill and talent. Get involved. The idea of working in games is romanticized; actually working on games is much different. How can you even know what you want to do if you haven't tried it? Join a community and help on a project.

Ericka: Go to school!  There are a lot of fantastic programs out there.  While you are there don’t see your school work as a means to an end (ie. diploma), use your projects and assignments as a way to prove your worth and make portfolio pieces.  School is a place to grow your style, strengths and make mistakes without being fired.  It can also be a fantastic place to network and find people that you know you can trust to with a job or even better... will recommend you for one.  Even after 10 years, I still fall back on my college friends first when I need to rally a crew for a project.
 

8. For Tony: You’ve been in the creative industry for 15+ years. Since that time you’ve been involved with a number of organizations and various media. Storylabs, the Bay Area Video Coalition, South by Southwest (SXSW), MuchMusic, alternative reality games, story telling games, serious games, to name a few. You are an educator, a lecturer on social/serious/story/online games; you make Flash games and are incredibly involved with Toronto Arts community. What has been most rewarding about your long term transmedia career?

 

Tony: I get the most reward from collaboration with diverse people, particularly from industries or cultural sectors other than games.  Working as a mentor with the Bay Area Video Coalition’s annual Producers Institute (a San Francisco-based program where filmmakers learn about new media and games) has been a career highlight for the past 5 years.

 

9. What game project(s) are you most proud of and why?

 

Tony: I think we did a great job on three games we lead the design and development of for marblemedia’s “Splatalot” TV series on YTV (and other broadcasters).  We managed to apply a good degree of polish on those games within the allotted time and budget, and they are among our most technically-sophisticated games.  I’m also proud of Dionysian Dream, a game we tried to build in 2009 using the Torque game engine—we weren’t able to finish the game but we learned valuable lessons in creating the prototype and are working on a reboot of the project in Unity3D.

 

10. What has so far been your worse experience developing games? It can be anything from tight deadlines, publisher interference, and development hell.

 

Being primarily a services company, we are occasionally challenged with a deadly combination of low budget, tight timeline, and difficult client or partner. We don’t like to talk in detail about those kinds of projects, but suffice it to say we learn from every “bad” experience and try not to repeat it in the future.

 

 

11. What are the pros and cons of running an independent game studio?

 

Being a small independent company means we are agile and responsive.  Our projects have very short timelines compared to the mainstream game industry.  So we’re never stuck with one project for too long.  One of our biggest challenges is keeping a constant flow of projects coming through, and balancing service work with original projects. Because we are so small, the entire company can be busy with service work to the neglect of some great original games.

 

12. What has Phantom Compass added to your life?

 

Tony: The ability to work on original games and still get a paycheque.

 

13. What was most meaningful about working on SOS_Slaves with Chelo Alvarez-Stehle? (For our audiences, she is a Spanish documentary filmmaker who co-founded the Masala Project highlighting the plight of Nepalese girls sold into sex trafficking.)

 

Tony: I worked with Chelo during the BAVC (Bay Area Video Coalition) Producers Institute in 2009 where I helped incubate a first-person role-playing game about children escaping slavery and trafficking situations.  Every time I work on a serious game project I learn about topics I don’t normally have much exposure to.  Getting to know Chelo, her creative team, and her project was a great experience.  Her project made an appearance at the Games for Change festival this year.

 

14. What are your common development tools?

 

We work mainly with the Adobe Creative Suite (excepting video editing and desktop publishing), Flash Builder and Unity3D production software.  We use the Assembla management tool combined with Google Docs and Skype for remote team collaboration. We use the Office suite for admin and business duties. Hardware-wise we use a mix of Mac and Windows devices.

 

15. Phantom Compass has consulted and created a number of serious games such as Persuasion as part of TV Ontario’s Civics101 program. Serious games are interesting to academia and even ‘big’ game industry because they strive to teach and change. The recent 2011 Games for Change Festival demonstrated a game (SOS_Slaves) that you consulted on; and even Gabe Newell of Valve Software had a keynote there talking about how educators use Portal to teach physics. From your experience, what future challenges do you see for serious game development?

 

It’s really hard to make a serious game that is also extremely fun and engaging. That’s a challenge today, and I think will remain so.  Serious games aimed at educational markets are going to have a continuing battle against outdated computing platforms—it’s always challenging developing for diverse and low- to mid-range hardware and software.

 

16. What future do you see for Phantom Compass?

 

If we play our cards right, a long and profitable one where our slowly-but-steadily-expanding team works on increasingly more interesting and larger-scale projects.

 

17. Is there anything you would personally like to transmit to the IGDA Toronto Chapter about Phantom Compass? (You can talk about anything I might have missed, including Points4People)

 

We’re trying our best to increase our visibility in the Toronto development community by attending local industry events.  We’re always on the hunt for talented Ontario creatives and developers.  Please say hi if you see us at an event, visit us on Twitter (@phantomcompass) or Facebook (www.facebook.com/wemakegames). Looking forward to chatting in person!

 

 

The IGDA Toronto chapter would like to thank Tony Walsh, Ericka Evans, Thomas Detko, and Jos Yule of Phantom Compass for their support and for the interview.

 

If your organization would like to participate in the Game Developer Studio Series initiative, please contact us at toronto@igda.org.

 

Footnotes