International master of game designing Pascal Luban, who held a workshop in Tehran last week, expressed surprise at the rapid development which the young gaming industry has undergone in the past 6 or 7 years.
In an interview with MNA, the master game designer explained about the present and future conditions of game designing in Iran.
In his visits to 5 local game studios, he said he found “great enthusiasm among Iranians who are both skilled individually and organized institutionally.” The latter is an important issue as he put, “as there are many countries with talented individuals that cannot produce a proper game as they work alone and not as a group.” But what he saw in Iran was “a good sense of cooperation even in small studios.”
Although he has seen “weaknesses and problems in the games on hand in the studios,” he believes that the productions are more than acceptable as the industry is still nascent.
In his opinion, “in five year’s time, there will be at least one Iranian game of international standards, able to compete with other world class gaming studio productions in the global market.”
According to Luban, a game consists of several components such as artificial intelligence, idea, art, innovation, etc. “To produce a successful game, all the aspects should be developed uniformly.”
A creative idea is essential to create a unique game as the market is so crowded with various types and kinds of games; however, the new ideas also need to be understandable. Creating such a balance between innovation and intelligibility is rather difficult,” he noted.
Workshop
After a two-day workshop, organized by the Iran Computer & Video Games Foundation last week, the French designer visited a few game studios and provided Iranian designers with information on how to succeed in presenting their products and establish a presence in the international markets.
Pascal Luban is a freelance creative director and game designer based in France. He has been working in the game industry as a game or level designer since 1995 and has been commissioned by major studios and publishers. He is the founder and manager of ‘The Game Design Studio.’ His first game for mobile platforms, published in 2007 by an Irish publisher, has received the ‘Best in Gaming Award’ at the 2009 Digital Media Awards of Dublin.
