Gaming industry still hobbyist pursuit, says Malaysian game developer

For Chan Mun Hon and many others just starting out in app development, making games for the iPhone started out as something fun. Some have gone on to become overnight successes – like those who created the useless fart apps, or iShoot – while others, like Chan, have hardly made a splash in the sales figures.

Not that Chan is bothered too much. After all, his creation – a 3D puzzle game called Space Junk-i – was a by-product of a free mind testing out the 3D component for Adobe Flash before he ported it over as an iPhone App. While his download figures are only around the 100 mark, the Malaysian at least won some recognition at the national Kre8tif Awards last December when he won in the Best Mobile Game category.

“The submission was a very last-minute one,” Chan chuckles. “It was my way of making up for the lack of marketing put into the product – Space Junk-i was just an experiment after all, so I didn’t have a lot of expectations for it in the first place.”

Chan, however, concedes that the days of the one-man overnight success stories seen during the earlier days of the App Store are impossible. “These days, with such a saturated market place, the only way to make money is to spend money into advertising.

So has the award helped in any way? “Oh, it’s too early to say if the award had any effect on the sales,” he laughs.

The game deserves more than the paltry sales figures. Based on the block puzzle game Pengu, Space Junk-i is a game that requires players to push a block towards its exit, while taking into account various obstacles and elements such as exploding cubes and immovable blocks. The complexity created in each level walks the fine line between being hair-rippingly frustrating and hypnotically immersive.

While Chan loves games, he doesn’t see his company, Impreszions, making it a primary focus. In Malaysia, he says, the gaming industry is still very much a hobbyist pursuit, and though there are talented game developers and graphic artists here, the support and education system is geared only towards animation and computer graphics (CG).

“Media and arts schools here only promote CG animation, but not the CG that you need for game development, and students don’t learn about the overall picture of game development – creating levels, characters, storyline – only the CG development.

“And those who study arts and programming ending up building databases, that’s where Malaysia is moving to,” he adds.

‘Slow to adopt’

The jobs that pay the company bills are in web development. Although Chan is bullish on HTML5′s future to rule the web, he sees many Malaysian clients slow to adopt it.

“The market here doesn’t take the risk towards new technologies, and we’re about four to five years down the road compared to other developed countries like the US,” he says.

But the cavalry for HTML5 adoption here is arriving in the shape of Apple’s devices. Clients, he says, are more interested in developing for the iPad or iPhone first before bringing it to the web. They don’t understand the technical capabilities of HTML5, but show them an iPad app that works, and they swoon.

“When I pitch to clients for web projects these days, I go in pitching in to develop an application for the iPad and iPhone first,” he says.

“And after showing that it works on the iPad – then I say to them, ‘Hey, you know what? I can make the same thing work as a website as well!’ and then I code a website in HTML 5 that does the exact same thing as the App,” he says.

As for the future of Flash – the technology that first kick-started his foray into games – he’s convinced that it’s a fading technology, thanks to Apple. “There’s going to be a transition period for a few years, but eventually Flash is going to drop away for HTML 5. It’s all about the iPad – as long as it works on the iPad, that’s what matters to the client.”

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