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Jakarta Post

Agate Studio story of perseverance, dreamers

Indonesian game developer Agate Studio’s journey begins with the dream of 18 game addicts to develop the Indonesian game industry.

A. Kurniawan Ulung (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, August 22, 2017

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Agate Studio story of perseverance, dreamers Tester: A man plays a game developed by Agate during the Bekraf Game Prime 2017 at Balai Kartini in Jakarta. (JP/A. Kurniawan Ulung)

Aditia Dwiperdana, 29, has loved playing games since he was in elementary school.

His mother sometimes scolded him for playing so much and forgetting to study or sleep.

However, he always had millions of reasons to defend his hobby.

“It teaches me to not easily give up. If we play a game and lose, we will try again until we win. Gamers are always optimistic,” Aditia, who graduated from the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), said.

Dreaming of developing the game industry, he and 17 of his friends, mostly from ITB, often joined game-making competitions from 2007 to 2008, but they never won. Failure could not stop them. They set up game developer Agate Studio on April 1, 2009, in Bandung, West Java.

Currently employing 110 people, Agate has produced over 200 games and grabbed at least 19 awards, including the People Choice Mochi’s Award during Flash Gaming Summit in San Francisco, United States.    

“Our first game, a zombie-shooting game English Defender, sold for US$500,” recalled Aditia.

On Sunday in Jakarta, he introduced a new game, cooking simulation game Dungeon Chef, during Bekraf Game Prime 2017, an annual event for game developers and game industry practitioners in ASEAN.

Agate has produced games for Android devices since 2013. It first developed Flash-powered Facebook games and began creating iOS games following the rising popularity of video game franchise Angry Birds in 2010.

He said the complexity of a game influenced the production process, which could take more than a year.

Living in a big and rich country, Agate rarely meets with challenges when it comes to searching for inspiration, according to Aditia, who says his games are inspired by everyday events.

New attractions: Agate’s games attract youngsters during Bekraf Game Prime 2017.
New attractions: Agate’s games attract youngsters during Bekraf Game Prime 2017. (JP/A. Kurniawan Ulung)

Having been downloaded over 500,000 times in Play Store, Juragan Terminal (Terminal’s Owner), for example, was inspired by the crowded and hectic terminal premises with limited facilities in cities in the country.

Another example is web-based soccer simulation game Football Saga, which Aditia said was inspired by the conflict between the Indonesian Premier League (LPI) and the Indonesian Super League (ISL) in 2012.

“Because half of the people working in Agate love soccer, we thought about what we could do to make the conditions better,” he said. “Rather than being confused about which league we should support, let’s play soccer together through this game.”

Echoing the motto Live the Fun Way, Agate wants its games to color the world to make it a happier place for all to live in.

With games, people can do something that they maybe cannot do in real life.

“In a game, you can climb Mount Everest or you can be a racing driver who races in Formula One, for example,” he said.

“Playing games will also boost your creativity,” he said.

However, people, especially children, should play games in accordance with their age, he adds.

When Aditia was little, the games that he played were so simple that he could distinguish what was real and what was not.

Virtual chef: The cooking simulation game Dungeon Chef is available in Play Store.
Virtual chef: The cooking simulation game Dungeon Chef is available in Play Store. (JP/A. Kurniawan Ulung)

Today, modern games have made fictional things, including violent scenes like striking and kicking, look real. Therefore, age restrictions are necessary to help parents monitor the games their children are playing.

“Playing games has positive and negative sides, but I focus on the positive ones,” he said.

To penetrate the global market, Agate has teamed up with foreign game publishers and developers.

In 2013, it released slingshot-puzzle game Up in Flames with UK-based game publisher Chillingo, known for popular titles such as Angry Birds and physics puzzler Cut the Rope.

Agate also cooperated with Japanese video game developer Square Enix, known for its role-playing video game franchises Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Due to their collaboration, in 2013, Indonesian gamers could enjoy popular web-based warfare simulation game Sengoku IXA, which 1.1 million players in Japan have played.

Knowing that the game industry in the country remains young, Aditia is excited about local game developers that have grown not only in number but also in quality.

According to his observations, the Indonesian game industry started to flourish in 2010, particularly after mobile phone producer Nokia provided training sessions for everyone who wanted to be game developers through a game competition called Mobile Game Developer War.

For Aditia, Indonesian games are not being left behind if compared to those from other countries in Southeast Asia.

“But there’s still a lot of work to do to make our games better and better,” he said. 

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