The Lost South African Game Developer Interviews Part 1: Travis Bulford

Friday 12 Feb 2010

A little over a year ago I conducted a series of interviews with a diverse, influential and talented group of developers both from and based in South Africa, which resulted in an article for industry trade site Gamasutra entitled ‘The South African Game Development Scene: Past Present and Future,’ which attempted to look at the history of game development in the country and surmise how an industry may rise and move forward here.

A lot of the interview material was unfortunately left out of the article for reasons of conciseness, and I say unfortunately because almost every response I was given was a gold mine of information and history that could potentially not only benefit aspiring South African game developers, and game developers in other developing nations looking to make a living in this industry, but also inform gaming enthusiasts around the world as to the complexity, and joy, of making videogames under difficult circumstances.

So after lying dormant on my hard drive for a year, I’ve decided to spruce up the interviews, which are just as relevant now as they were then, and start posting them here on El33tonline in a six-part series, starting today with part one, and an interview with Travis Bulford.

Bulford would be best known for his work at the small indie game developer Celestial on the action platformer Toxic Bunny, which was started in 1994 and completed in 1996 after a combination of part-time and full-time work.

Celestial then released another game in 2000, a cyberpunk role-playing game called The Tainted, after which the company began work on a Zulu War-themed real-time strategy title, which was never finished. After changing the company’s name to Twilyt in 2001, the group became dormant, and Bulford became a full-time Java software engineer.

Bulford also began work on a port of Toxic Bunny to the Java development platform. You should head on over to the official Toxic Bunny Java port site to show Bulford your support!

Let’s begin the interview:

Q: Could you please state your name, current position and official title

Travis Bulford

Full Time: Java Architect

Part Time: Games Author/Developer/Coffee Drinker

Q: What first got you interested and excited about games and game development?

Travis Bulford: Creating something that I could share the mix of art and technology is my primary attraction.

Q: What initial steps did you take in order to be working in the field of games and games development? (Formal education, self-taught, types of projects worked on)? What time period was this?

TB: I was always obsessed with doing game development and still am. From the moment I got my hands on a computer (that would be 1987), doing game development was my obsession. I am not sure there was a specific plan at that stage, or rather that there was a new one each week.

After school I got involved in the local demo scene here, and that taught me a lot about organizing and planning. I would say it was then that my more formal plans started. I found the 3 other members [of what would become Celestial) - Caleb, Nick and Brian, and we started working on Toxic Bunny part time in 1994. We did so for 1 and a 1/2 years, the last 6 months of which we spent full time to finish. Of course, being so young we had no expenses to speak of, which really made it a lot easier.

Q: Was your education path influenced by the availability of specialized courses in South Africa at the time?

TB: Nope, it was a long time ago, truth be told, and I kinda didn’t work hard enough at studies, unless they were linked to the possibility of game development. I spent more time in school working on designs and ideas then school work.

Q: Was game development seen as a viable career choice when you decided to pursue it?

TB: Not at all.

Q: What in the way of game and software development, if anything, were you involved with prior to your work at Celestial (previous employers, types of projects involved with at said employers, responsibilities at said employers)?

TB: I worked with a shareware company and then a multimedia company, at which time I was lucky enough we could go full-time in 1996 to finish Toxic Bunny.

Q: What was South Africa’s situation (economically, politically etc.) when you decided to pursue a career in game development and begin to build Celestial? What time period was this?

TB: Well I would say that South Africans are a lot more proud of themselves now then they were then - the stigma of something being local is no longer a bad one. That is a real plus.

However, I don’t think we have grown enough economically to support a games team from local sales only, which is a real challenge, as any team out there needs to publish internationally to make ends meet.

Q: How has this situation changed over time?

TB: Well, the local games market has crashed twice since we started, but it seams to have stabilized. Local investors still don’t take games as a serious market. I think it will take a local team making it really big before they do.

Q: How has the development scene changed or evolved since you started?

TB: Games development has become a lot more formal and processes are better established. Also, production costs are far higher than ever with the increasing quality of the productions. Having said that, technology has also closed that gap a great deal.

Q: What potential did you see back then for the growth of the game development industry in South Africa and has this potential come to fruition?

TB: I have always believed that we have a great backbone of media companies and creative skills here. Unfortunately we have not yet seen a booming industry. I would say the last 2 years have seen some new exciting developments - it would be fantastic to see the games industry boom.

Q: What accomplishments did you achieve at Celestial (games created, growing the awareness of the industry, anything you’re particularly proud of resulting from your work)? What time period was this?

TB: We published 2 games - Toxic Bunny in 1996 and The Tainted in 2000. We did a great deal of promotional work for games development in South Africa and ran various articles promoting knowledge and the idea of games development.

Q: What difficulties did you see in bringing up Celestial/Twilyt in South Africa at the time?

TB: We were really young and did not have the kind of business savvy we needed to broker international deals - we lost a great deal of momentum due to this. There are always issues that are a factor, such as getting investment and publication, but we found our way around most of these.

Q: Have you seen these difficulties ease over the years, or are they still present?

TB: Well, I’m not so young anymore ;) guess we will see about the savvy sooner or latter.