The Lost South African Game Developer Interviews Part 4: Jacques Krige

Last year I wrote an article for videogame 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 South Africa and surmise how an industry may rise and move forward here.

The article was based on interviews conducted with a diverse, influential and talented group of developers both from and based in South Africa, but a lot of the responses were unfortunately not included due to the nature of the piece, so in an effort to share this potential goldmine of knowledge with aspiring game developers and gaming enthusiasts both here and abroad, I decided to start posting the interviews here on El33tonline, in full, continuing today with part four, and an interview with Jacques Krige (you can read part one, part two and part three as the mood takes you).

Jacques Krige (known as ‘Korax’ in the online development community) is the leader of South African game development community SAGameDev, owner of technology company Business Gateway, and founder of Excentrax Games.

As a self-taught programmer, level designer and game developer, Krige cut his teeth programming business applications and began working with level creation tools for a variety of id Software and Raven Software-developed games, as well as programming the NewHexen mod for Raven Software’s Hexen II.

More recently, Krige took over ownership of the South African game development community website, SAGameDev, and has continued work on upgrading the site, while taking an interesting approach to forming his own game development studio, Excentrax Games, by first creating and running a successful internet technology company, Business Gateway, to fund the games he and his studio will create in the future.

Currently, Krige and Excentrax Games are working with Unreal Engine 3 technology (after working with a variety of other technologies, including Microsoft’s XNA) to create their first game as a studio.

Let’s begin the interview:

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

Jacques Krige: My name is Jacques Krige, also known as “Korax” online. I mostly spend my time developing and architecting web-based systems. I’m the Technical Director of our company, Business Gateway (t/a bizinfo).

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

JK: Well, when my father bought our first Personal Computer, a 286, for our home. I was 12 years old back in 1990 and I got hooked on Commander Keen 3. I think you should become a gamer first before advancing to aspire to be a game developer. CK3 converted me into a gamer, but only three years later in 1993 I realized that being a gamer isn’t enough - I [wanted] more!

This realization came when I first played Doom 1. [During this time] I realized that you can make new levels for [Doom] when I got a copy of the Doom Construction Kit and got my own level, which was like a box, designed for the game. For me, changing a game was unheard of. There was no looking back since then!

Q: What initial steps did you take in order to be working in the field of games and game development? Was your education path influenced by the availability of specialised courses in South Africa at the time? Did you think or know that there was a demand for game development skills at the time in South Africa, or was it simply something you were interested in?

JK: I was more into the art side of game development in the early years than the technical side. Coming from a rural area where I grew up, I had little to no opportunity to meet people that shared my passion for aspiring to make games… no books, no money, no courses, no internet.

Everything I know up until today is self taught. Most of the time between 1993 and 1998 was spent working on levels for various games, most of them coming from id Software and Raven Software. During this time I authored close to 40 levels. At the time I also dabbled with programming, but not on a large scale - only to satisfy my hunger for “making things” related to games, like game cheat listing programs using Turbo Pascal 6.

Q: What in the way of game and software development were you involved with prior to your current work at Excentrax and SAGameDev?

JK: I would call this my learning era. I started at a company called GID, which was in fact a department under SASOL (petro-chem company) in the rural area in a small town called Secunda. I had been living in this very same town since I was a toddler, so no huge advancement there. I was taken in as a learning junior to learn how to make applications that clients wanted. Luckily, it was at the time that internet/intranet web sites/applications started appearing as companies started taking up [the internet] as an alternative to normal desktop applications.

A lot of my early programming and web development experience was built up in this time between 1998 and 2004. It was during 1998 when the idea of running a game development company dawned on me… an innocent idea back then, oblivious to the difficulties of making it a reality. It was also during this time that I learned the C language and learned about the inner workings of game engines, like Quake1 and Hexen2, thanks to sites like quakesrc.org

Q: What are your key aims in establishing your own development studio, Excentrax? If possible, could you tell us what you’re currently working on?

JK: There are 4 key objectives:

First, what we need in South Africa is to have a good game development platform to attract people interested in the subject matter to share and learn from others frequently making use of this platform. To satisfy this need, SAGameDev was taken over and re-launched in late 2006. It’s primarily being re-established to benefit Excentrax Games marketing-wise, but it’s available to anyone and any other game development company that wants to use the platform to their benefit.

Second I quit my day job, making my time my own. As long as somebody else is your boss, you will have a hard time becoming your own boss or for that matter somebody else’s boss. ;)

Third, securing funds. Starting my own business to be able to fund my game development company without having to be at the forefront of things time-wise to make the funds roll in. This was extremely difficult to do. Personally, I’m trying to avoid the situation of being a one/two man gamedev company and being involved in 1-on-1 projects for a single client at a time.

Finally, deciding on a direction and technology for Excentrax Games, and building company resources funded by the business company, which I covered in my third objective.

I’m currently working on a slightly modified (at the moment) idTech2 (Quake2) engine. The goal at the moment is twofold. Firstly, converting and re-mastering the old Quake1 game to run on this modified idTech2 engine. This is done to please the fan base that Quake1 has by relieving the limitations of the very dated idtech1 (Quake1) engine.

Through this I will be able to satisfy the UQE (Ultimate Quake Engine) project as well as help make Excentrax Games become more visible to the international community. This technology will be used in Excentrax Game’s own classic-styled, original FPS title. Maybe something very Doom2-like or even Serious Sam-like. I think the capabilities of the idTech2 engine should match pretty well with the current skill level and the availability of skills in South Africa. It’s a good starting point none-the-less.

[Note: You can read up on Krige’s Quake 2 XNA project, as well as download the project and the source in its current state, over here]

[Update] Excentrax Games has moved on to working with Unreal Engine 3 technology for its first game as a studio, rather than using XNA-based or Quake-related technology. [End of Update]