Ladies and gentlemen, please give a very warm Scottishgames type welcome to the team at Brain Dead Ape. A development studio with one foot in the world o’ games and another in traditional software development, Brain Dead Ape is working in the mobile (iOS and Android) markets, as well as the rapidly growing gamification and promotional games areas.
The studio is based in Edinburgh, but has team members distributed across the world and features many members who have worked with major companies in the animation and videogames industries.
The company’s first original title, Show Me Your Bum, is umm, fairly unique. Players can choose from a number of homeless vagabonds and participate in a whole series of mini games. If you’re familiar with Terry Pratchett, think of the hobo’s like Foul Old Ron and you’re on the right lines. The company also has plans to extend this out and release new mini games and aspects of the game once it hits the market.
Brain Dead Ape is also working in the marketing and gamification sectors, offering brand and license owners, marketing agencies and corporations, the opportunity to take their Intellectual Property (IP) and brands into promotional games, or make their business/services far more playful and fun.
You can also find, follow and like the company over on Facebook, or through their Twitter account.
We spoke to Nikodem Goszczynski, the founder of the company, about the formation of the company and its plans…
[Scottishgames] Hi Nikodem, thanks for speaking to us. So, what is Brain Dead Ape?
[Nikodem] The whole games market has moved forward very quickly over the last few months and is of huge interest to companies all over the world. It’s no longer just about games for specific games consoles, but creating fun and enjoyable experiences across every kind of device and gadget. For that market, you need a company which can address all of those new opportunities and treat every area of this huge new games market with enthusiasm and creativity. So we’ve put together a great team of people who can do just that.
[SG] Why did you start the company in Scotland?
[NG] There’s a huge amount of talent here and a lot of help and support for creating a new company. Plus there are four universities producing graduates with game development and design skills, so it couldn’t be better.
[SG] Show Me Your Bum? That sounds… interesting?!
[NG] It’s very tongue-in-cheek. The whole idea is fun. We’ve got some great characters in the game. Really unusual and interesting characters. No princesses and heroes, we wanted to create something entirely different. You can create your own hobo and then you’ve got to look after them, take care of them and compete in a whole range of mini games, so they can get the things they need, upgrade your character and open new games. It’s looking great and we think people will really enjoy it.
[SG] What draws you to the marketing side of games and the dreaded ‘gamfication’ area?
[NG] There are so many opportunities there for a company which knows what it’s doing. With a few honourable exceptions, most of the promotional games you see online are just awful. They’re not fun, they don’t inspire you to share them with friends and the tie into the brand tends to be really tenuous. We think there’s a different approach here. The same goes for ‘gamification’. If you read the marketing press, it’s been a buzzword for the last half of this year. It’s being mentioned everywhere. Yet the actual understanding of it and projects actually making use of it, are few, far between and again, not the greatest. By bringing a genuine enthusiasm and passion for games, plus a solid understanding of what the term actually means, we think we can do something genuinely new and interesting.
[SG] What are your plans for the future?
[NG] We’re finishing the initial builds of Show Me Your Bum fairly soon and planning the next mini games and levels to add. We’re out speaking to a whole range of companies across Scotland, the UK and worldwide, so hopefully you’ll be hearing a lot more from us in the very near future.
