The Bridgend video games developer that is taking on the big players
MANY of the biggest video game developers have become household names as the popularity of games for consoles and PC continues to grow.
Names like Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Rockstar are among the most recognisable industry “mega-powers”, with just about everyone having heard of FIFA, Assassin’s Creed and Grand Theft Auto.
But smaller, independent game developers have enjoyed a boom period since gaming started turning digital, with downloadable games offering the opportunity to save production costs on discs, cartridges and packaging.
One of those companies which has carved out success is Wales Interactive.
Its games have appeared on the Nintendo Switch and Wii U, as well as PlayStation, Xbox, PC, Mac and mobile devices, and it has more than a million downloads to its name.
The company was founded in 2012 and hit the ground running with three games – Gravity Badgers, Jack vs Ninjas and Stride Files: The Square Murder – with the former releasing on consoles as well as mobile devices.
A steady stream of games have followed, all of varying genres, including Soul Axiom, an adventure-puzzle game, Coffin Dodgers, a comedy kart-racer, and most recently Don’t Knock Twice, a first-person horror game.
Wales Interative, which is based in Pencoed, Bridgend, was founded in 2012 by David “Dai” Banner and Richard Pring.
Ben Tester, from the company, said: “The first office was in the attic room of David’s house in the Rhondda Valley, but we now have a stateof-the-art games studio based at Sony UK Technology Park, with a team of 10 games industry professionals.”
“The original motivations for setting up the business were to create a significant games industry presence in Wales and to tap into the local graduate talent pool that we knew existed in the area,” Mr Tester said.
“We not only planned to put Wales on the video games development map but create sustainable highlyskilled jobs in the games sector, which at that time did not exist in this part of the UK.
“We have already achieved those goals and our studio has gone from strength to strength, continuing to develop and publish cutting-edge gaming titles that entertain the world.”
Life at Wales Interactive could appear particularly glamorous to those on the outside, especially considering some members of the team have recently returned from a game developers’ conference in San Francisco.
“We travel all around the world to the biggest and best gaming events and we are being recognised as ‘that Welsh game developer and publisher’, which is truly flattering knowing you’re representing your country in your industry,” Mr Tester said.
“Our location has played a positive role in our success and has given us an identity internationally.
“Across the world, our titles have been downloaded in the millions and every game that’s played brings the name Wales Interactive to every pair of eyes.
“We are always finding ways to reinforce the association our games have with Wales, including featuring support for the Welsh language, and this is proving to be a great success.
“Only recently, we had the opportunity to represent the country, along with other developers, on the first-ever Welsh stand at GDC San Francisco – one of the biggest gaming conferences in the world.”
They even use local myths as inspiration.
“We have the opportunity to produce just about anything we want, from games featuring badgers in space to others featuring a ferociouslooking witch from Slavic folklore,” he said.
“Our design process can be influenced by the market trend and where we think it’s going, but at the end of the day we create the kind of games that we would want to play ourselves.
“We try not to focus on any one particular genre, and that’s the beauty of being an independent studio.
“The one thing that many of our games often have in common is that they all tell a story and this is where we tend to start our design process.
“We’re currently in production of a new story-rich horror game, which is inspired by a local ghost story right here in Bridgend.”
The company harks back to the past in that they have produced some FMV (Full Motion Video) games, which use pre-recorded video sometimes featuring actors rather than computer-generated visuals.
Mr Tester said: “Something we hear a lot of in the games industry is that FMV games died in the ’90s because the tech wasn’t advanced enough to produce high-quality video that runs smoothly on a gaming platform.
“Production values were also painfully low and part of the reason the acting was just so bad. Flash-forward two decades and now we’re in a position where we can create cinematic interactive movies with high production values that run well on console.
“Since 2016 we released The Bunker and Late Shift, which were the first and only FMV games to make it to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
“The two games are set to release on Nintendo Switch later this month, which will be a big boost to the popularity of the genre.
“Our hope is to be the driving force behind the rebirth of FMV and we have many more games already in the making – one unannounced title in partnership with a Welsh film studio.