TechFront is the largest game development studio in Brazil, with several great titles like Burger Island, Eye for Design, Purrfect Pet Shop, and now Pakoombo under their belt. We were lucky enough to have a long chat with their president, Rafael Aguilher da Costa. In Part 1 of the interview, Rafael shares his success stories: from his journey to starting TechFront up to how they made some of your favorite games (gaining some pounds in the process!). This is great stuff, we swear - read on…

CR: Could you tell us a little bit about your background? Who are you, and how did you get started making casual games?

RAC: I guess I share a similar profile type of many people that work in the games industry. I had my first contact with games and computers very early in my life -when I was six years old- and from that point I never really strayed too far from either. I graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science and later earned a Masters Degree in Artificial Intelligence. During this time I tried for many years to build up a game company, but my first successful attempt only came around the year 2000 when I founded Ignis Games, my first game studio.

Ignis Games successfully raised around one million dollars – a lot of money in Brazil back at that time- with a private venture capital fund to execute a project targeting the Brazilian MMORPG market. The project was called Erinia (you can still find gameplay videos on YouTube these days!).

It took four years using around 15 people to develop from scratch all the server and client technology for this fully-featured, 3D MMORPG game. We released the game in the Brazilian and German markets in mid-2004, but the project never really paid off for all that work. The MMORPG market had changed considerably and it became too expensive and too complex for such a small company to stay competitive in the markeplace. Still, we were very proud to be the first Brazilian MMORPG to be ever developed, especially with such limited resources.

By that time, the company had changed its focus to work-for-hire projects in the PC and console markets, but after some time we were faced with serious financial difficulties and unfortunately we had to close Ignis’ doors in mid-2005.

In 2005 I founded TechFront to do custom applications software development and engage in new work-for-hire contracts in the domestic Brazilian market, developing internet websites and advergames. From this point we kept expanding our work-for-hire business and started to develop larger and more complex games, focusing on Flash technology from the very beginning. We had an opportunity in 2006 to develop a new Defender of the Crown game for Cinemaware and Burger Island for eGames, and since then we have been focusing on delivering high-quality titles at very competitive costs. Our early strategy to focus on Flash paid off as we accumulated a lot of good experience on this platform and were doing very advanced things with it back in 2006 already.

CR: TechFront’s developers have experience on MMOs, PlayStation 2, and Xbox development. Why did you decide to focus on casual games?

RAC: There aren’t many opportunities to work in game development here in Brazil, since the domestic market is still very small but growing. However, there are lots of good professionals here and I kept in contact with many of them after Ignis Games closed its doors. So, when I got the opportunity to make games again, I hired back several of the professionals who had worked with me before and many other highly-skilled programmers and developers who wanted an opportunity in creating games. Focusing on casual games was the fastest way to show that we had the right skills and talent to deliver very high-quality titles.

From the very beginning, we setup our company just like an American studio, using advanced production processes and basing all our internal communication in the English language. The objective was to make anyone that was used to working with European and American businesses feel comfortable working with us. Brazil has a very similar business culture and time zones to the USA and Europe, and we wanted to take advantage of that.

We started (and still do) making games using Macromedia Flash technology. We probably are one of the first developers to release full download titles using this technology and it was only possible because we used very experienced software engineers, used to working with low-level languages, to develop on this high level platform. This has allowed us to deliver very high-quality games to the casual PC public and prepared us to move forward on other platforms like the Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, Apple iPhone and others. So, the casual games market represented an amazing opportunity and we took it as seriously as the traditional videogames market we were used to before.

CR: You’ve worked with big names like Sandlot Games and eGames. What was the experience like making games for big publishers?

RAC: We always learn something with publishers no matter their size. The most important thing is that we use each experience to improve our internal and external processes. To stay flexible and adapt to each publisher’s needs and priorities is the most important step for a company that wants to become a leader in the marketplace. We take our partners very seriously and do everything we can to always deliver the best work possible. It is very important to us that each project satisfies the needs and objectives of the publisher.

CR: Tell us about your past games (including Burger Island, Eye for Design, and Purrfect Pet Shop). What makes them all distinctively Techfront?

RAC: We’ve released up to eight titles over the last two years and our aim has always been to do so by delivering quality content and fun gameplay.

All of our past and current projects have their unique challenges; for instance Defender of the Crown - a casual strategy game and TechFront’s first casual project- pushed the software engineering team to the limits of the Flash platform because we had to deal with many computer AI players working against the player in many different mini-games plus the main strategy game. Also, we had to work out a way to use pre-rendered 3D scenes and animations in a 2D environment on a very limited computer processing platform used by the the average casual player.

Burger Island was our 2nd project and a few curious facts that occurred that we like to tell is that the team was always hungry during the development… and thanks to McDonald’s we gained a few pounds during that time… and never lost them! The other funny thing is that the waiter – Pierre – was created during a meeting when one of the artists was not paying attention and sketched the character as a way to take his mind off things…and Pierre ended up being an extremely popular character with fans of the game! Pierre wasn’t originally part of the game design.

Eye for Design was a great project we had the opportunity to create. It was a challenging title because although the theme of the game was about home decoration and improvement, the actual mechanic was that of a puzzle game. Combining that with a unique art style was a satisfying achievement that we are very proud of having created.

Regardless of the genre or theme we approach in our titles, the one thing that sets us apart from a lot of other developers are our high production values, unique art style and sense of humor.

In Part 2 of the interview tomorrow, Rafael talks about TechFront’s latest game Pakoombo, what game development life is like in Brazil, and what they have got in store for us next. Stay tuned to Casual Review!