The Lost South African Game Developer Interviews Part 2: Luke Lamothe

Friday 19 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, continuing today with part two, and an interview with Luke Lamothe (read part one over here).

Luke Lamothe currently serves as Technical Director at South African indie game developer Luma Arcade, but was born and raised in Canada, and after studying and assisting at the DigiPen Computer Graphics School, Lamothe moved to South Africa to co-found I-Imagine with fellow Digipen student, Dan Wagner.

I-Imagine was South Africa and Africa’s first ever console developer, as well as the first studio to be inducted into the Xbox Incubator programme, and released two titles, namely the action racing game ‘Chase: Hollywood Stunt Driver’ on Xbox, and the sci-fi action shooter ‘Final Armada’ on PS2 and PSP.

Once Final Armada was complete, Luke left the then dormant I-Imagine to work at then recent start-up, Luma Arcade where, following the commissioned development of a free-to-play racing game based on the Mini vehicle brand, MINI#37, the studio began work on a number of mobile titles, as well as 2009’s iPhone games Marble Blast Mobile and Flipt. Work now continues in partnership with InstantAction.com and Garage Games on new mystery technology, as well as mystery, unannounced projects.

Let’s begin the interview with Luke Lamothe:

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

Luke Lamothe, Technical Director at Luma Arcade

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

Luke Lamothe: From a young age I really enjoyed playing video games, and I spent many an hour in front of a television with a controller in my hands. When I entered high school and was first exposed to computer programming, I felt a natural aptitude for it and also enjoyed it immensely.

Seeing that video games were the product of computer programming (amongst other things), it just felt natural for me to become involved in programming video games.

Q: What initial steps did you take in order to be working in the field of games and games development? What time period was this?

LL: In order to gain an education to be able to program games, I was planning on attending a Computer Science program at university. However, I managed to stumble upon a school in Canada called DigiPen (this was back in 1995) that specifically taught computer programming geared towards game development. I applied, got accepted, and the rest is history.

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

LL: It was still under the radar, but it was growing rapidly at the time and was seen (by those who had a clue) as an emerging field. I think that when I graduated DigiPen in 1998, there were probably only 6 or 7 mid to large size development studios in Canada. I’m pretty sure that in the past 10 years or so, the number of game developers working in Canada has grown at least 10 or 20 fold.

Q: What in the way of game and software development, if anything, were you involved with prior to your work at I-Imagine?

LL: Upon graduating DigiPen in 1998, I spent a year at the school as a Teaching Assistant.

Q: What was your reaction to the development scene (or lack thereof) in coming from Canada to South Africa? What time period was this?

LL: I relocated to South Africa in September 1999, and I was pretty well versed at that time of the lack of game development industry here. It was actually quite exciting to think that we (i.e. the guys at I-Imagine) could have the chance to grow a new industry in South Africa. Well, it’s 9 years later and I’m still waiting…

Q: What about South Africa, as a country, did you find appealing that contributed to your decision to remain in the country?

LL: South Africa is a beautiful country, with great people (well, those who aren’t trying to car jack, rape, and kill you at least…), and a really good quality of life if you are in the middle class or above (and if you take the crime out of the equation).

But honestly, I more than likely would have left here 4 or 5 years ago if I hadn’t fell in love with a South African, got married, and started a family.

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?

LL: My initial exposure to South African game development was that there were a large number of talented artists who had the ability to jump right into game development. It took some time, but we were able to find quite a few very talented programmers with a passion for game development as well.

The big problem with programmers here though is that as game development in SA doesn’t have big money backing it, they will always be able to get higher paying jobs working for big corporates (i.e. banks), or companies who are contracted by big corporates. They will be doing mundane and boring programming work, but they can earn 2 or 3 times as much as they can by working for a game development company that only has a budget of R100k per month [$13 000 per month at current Rand/Dollar exchange rate].

Another big problem with growing the talent pool in South Africa has to do with the country’s stability. Unfortunately, SA is a country that young, talented individuals don’t see their future in, and they are more often than not looking to emigrate to Australia, Europe, or North America.

Q: What lead up to the establishment of I-Imagine and what accomplishments did you achieve there? What time period was this?

LL: I-Imagine was the idea of Dan Wagner, who was a classmate of mine at DigiPen. After graduating and moving back to South Africa in 1999, Dan decided to approach investors here for funding in order to start up a game development studio. In September 1999 the first team members arrived from the USA and Canada and we begun work on the title that would eventually become known as Chase: Hollywood Stunt Driver, which was completed in September 2002 for the Xbox.

After Chase was completed, I-Imagine went through a couple of years of trying to secure additional publishing deals and going through quite a bit of staff turnover (unhappy people, people emigrating, people leaving for higher paying jobs). Eventually, we landed a deal for Final Armada (PS2 / PSP) that was completed at the end of 2006. I-Imagine closed its doors when Final Armada was completed even though the company hadn’t really lost any money after running for 7 years. The reasons were that the investors were tired of watching the company break even for so long and had decided that their money would work better for them elsewhere.

I-Imagine started out with a team of 7 people, 6 of whom were not South African. In just under 2 years, the team was about 14 or 15 in size, and I was the only non-South African there. We hit our peak of about 20 employees in 2003 or 2004, and by the time that most of the staff got retrenched at the start of 2006, the team was back down to about 14 or so.

I guess I am most proud that I-Imagine lasted as long as it did and it gave South Africans the ability to work at a professional game development studio, creating games for leading console platforms. There are quite a few South Africans working abroad in the games industry now because they were able to learn professional game development at I-Imagine (I can think of 11 off of the top of my head). We were also the first company in the world to be admitted into the Xbox Incubator Program, and the first (and only) studio in Africa (AFAIK) to develop and release a console title.

Q: What was South Africa’s situation (economically, politically etc.), in your mind, when you began to build I-Imagine? What time period was this? How has this situation changed over time? How has the development scene changed or evolved since you started?

LL: As far as I remember, things were pretty much as they are now in South Africa. Actually, not much has really changed at all since I first got here towards the end of 1999.

As far as I know, a lot more people have become interested in game development than when I first got here, but a lot have also become disillusioned with it. I have seen many people “around” come and go. The biggest strides forward have been with a couple of web-communities, notably SAGameDev and Game.Dev as well as with the online magazine Dev.Mag.

Q: What difficulties did you see in bringing up I-Imagine in South Africa at the time?

LL: The difficulties were always about finding talented people (there were people around, but it wasn’t easy to find them), and convincing publishers that they should do business with a country way down at the bottom of Africa, when there were so many other developers in closer parts of the world to them to work with.

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

They are as present, if not more so than they were 9 years ago.

Q: Do you see these problems hindering the growth of Luma Arcade?

LL: Currently, there is a huge chicken/egg scenario that we are seeing at Luma Arcade. At the moment, we have enough work lined up for the next 6-12 months that has enabled us to look at hiring more programmers. However, there are a serious lack of computer programmers with the ability and knowledge to create commercial level games in South Africa that are interested in doing so at the salary levels that we are able to afford.

If, however, we were able to find these people to hire, we would be able to commit to producing even more work for our current clients, thereby generating more revenue which would allow us to hire more people as well as paying higher salaries. Chicken / egg.

This has led to growth at a slower rate than we actually could, because we have to be careful about not throwing around stupid sums of money in case work that we are counting on in the future doesn’t end up materialising.