With a hugely popular game for Apple Inc.'s iPhone under its belt, a small video-game studio in Prince Edward Island has now come up with its first original offering.
Other Ocean Interactive has done earlier work on console games including Ultimate Mortal Kombat for Nintendo DS and the Wii game Ten Pin Alley 2 . But this new game remains its intellectual property and the company will reap the benefits if it takes off.
“Creating your own [intellectual property] and making it successful, that's the holy grail of the game,” said Newfoundlander Andrew Ayre, owner of the company. “That's the home run. That's the grand slam.”
The company's strong ties to the region are evident in the new DS game, an educational offering for children that has about 10 hours of play. Puffins: Island Adventures has original music by Alan Doyle of the Newfoundland folk band Great Big Sea and artwork based on the Witless Bay Ecological Reserve in Newfoundland.
Other Ocean is a video game company based in PEI.
The new game, expected out next month, is the latest sign of strength from the small but flourishing cluster of companies lured to PEI by a province eager to create its own video-game industry.
Mr. Ayre's previous company established a presence to PEI in 2006 and Other Ocean was spun off the next year. It recently opened a studio in St. John's and has also started Sculpin, a games-testing company, in Charlottetown.
“We were really recruited by the provincial government,” Mr. Ayre said. “They put together kind of a customized incentive program to help us recruit people and help us get started.”
The new game comes after the studio hit it big with Super Monkey Ball , an iPhone game that generated widespread praise.
Billy Pidgeon, a research market analyst with Massachusetts-based IDC, said he expects to see more work done outside the traditional industry hot spots, with major players increasingly eager to buy from small studios.
“The big publishers are looking for stuff because, frankly, it's cheap and you get a lot of return for your investment,” he explained.
Other Ocean now operates from the Atlantic Technology Centre, a sleek four-storey building in downtown Charlottetown. Visitors to the studio pass through the entrance area, where producers and designers share space with couches and a big-screen television, and into the dimly lit area for artists. Farthest from the door is the quiet, intense and almost bare space where the coders work.
The building's tenants also include Longtail Studios and Telos Entertainment, which does computer animation as well. Bight Games is on a nearby street.
In all, more than 100 people are employed in the local industry, its growth helped by tax incentives, loans, rebates for office space and industry-friendly courses now being offered at postsecondary institutions.
“We had an interest here,” acknowledged Deirdre Ayre, Andrew's sister and Other Ocean's general manager, referring to their Atlantic Canadian roots. “But we had to make sure it made good business sense.”
Super Monkey Ball helped put them on the map. One reviewer wrote that “everyone wanted this iPhone game, it received almost as much hype as the iPhone itself.” Another noted that it set “the tone nicely for the iPhone as a serious gaming platform.”
The reception raised the company's profile. Among the 63 staff are a number of foreigners who were lured by the slower pace of life in Prince Edward Island, Ms. Ayre said. The chance to have more creative control over their work is another selling point.
“Our model has been to bring in the experienced people … and use these people as mentors so we can hire the junior people,” she said.
Some of those young people will come from the University of Prince Edward Island and Holland College, both of which have started offering courses that prepare students for the industry.
A video-game art and design “learning manager” at Holland College, Chris Sharpley also helped create the Super Monkey Ball application. He said that two-thirds of the students in his class are from Atlantic Canada. Others hail from across the country, and some are expected to stay when they graduate next spring.
“I try to introduce them to a range of skills that will make them employable anywhere,” he said. “But I try to tailor it for the local market so if they want to stay, they can.”
