The hack and slash studio Ogre Head recently completed a year of its existence and has been working real hard to complete its RPG Asura. To know how the journey for the studio has been so far and what one can expect out of the studio in the coming months AnimationXpress.com spoke with Zainuddin Fahad or Zain as he is fondly called in the circuit about his journey with the studio and why he left his job at Rocksalt Interactive to start his own.
“I always thought that I would start my own studio, but then the wise thing to do was to get some experience by working in the industry and then venture out on my own. So, I have been working in the industry for 5 years. I got my first job as an artist when I was 20 and it was nice; but all I got to do was some client projects t or some port which was forced on to our head. I was only doing art back then and Aubhik and Neeraj (co-founder, Ogre Head) also worked at the same place with me as a designer and a programmer respectively.”
The studio he says had been restrictive for his creative freedom and that was a hindrance as to his imagination and disallowed to put his own inputs into the projects he was working on.
“Whatever place I worked at I did not get full creative freedom. I was never allowed to put the things I wanted to put into a project. We were working like an automated machine. In the hopes that I would get an opportunity to work on AAA games and fortunately soon enough I got a chance to work on few of them. Here, in India usually the companies do not have their own IP, as a lot of client based projects, outsourcing projects or Bollywood based games are developed rather than original IP but that is changing with time.”
So, coming to Ogre Head Studio, the company came into existence in 2014 and has been working on Asura since, with a few client projects which has helped them sustain in this competitive industry, so when was the point of no return that he thought was the right time to start a new studio.
“The whole point of starting Ogre Head is very simple. To make games that we like and with complete creative freedom. At Rocksalt Interactive, the boss allowed me to start a small gaming division with Neeraj and Aubhik, but the problem there too, was that the IP was owned by Rocksalt. We had our restrictions so we quit the job there to start Ogre Head. We thought we could make our own IPs and take risk to make something of our own.”
Starting a studio in India with almost no funds can make a studio bundle up without a trace and even more sustaining it is rather commendable, “Neeraj and I put in somewhat cash and resources into the studio and our initial plan was to finish Asura in four months and make it into a mobile game. But it scaled up. So, we thought the game must be ventured into PC. The awards at the NASSCOM Game Developers Conference (Upcoming Game of the Year) and Game Hack Hyderabad (Game of the Day) have been the high points for the studio recently. But with these high points, we’ve also seen four-five months where we were out of cash and had to halt Asura to work on client projects to bare other expenses, which were testing times for the studio.”
