Kuju COO: We're Sticking With Console As The Market Rebounds

As the chief operating officer of UK-based independent developer Kuju Entertainment, Adrian Hawkins is responsible for making sure the company's three studios, Zoe Mode, Headstrong Games and Vatra, deliver the right kind of games on time to publishing partners. While the company has dipped its toes into the web and mobile spaces, Kuju is still "focusing very much on that core console market and making the money we can out of that," says Hawkins. "We have a broad portfolio of studios who do lots of different genres of games," says Hawkins, aware that covering multiple bases is crucial to the company's success. The Studio Mix Vatra, based in the Czech Republic, develops Unreal Engine-based core console titles (Silent Hill: Downpour) while Zoe Mode skews casual console (Zumba Fitness 2) and Headstrong focuses on action (The House of the Dead: Overkill) and DS titles. "We are quite well positioned in the market" thanks to that studio spread, he says. While Zoe Mode and Headstrong are long-established, Vatra has only shipped one game -- Rush'n Attack: Ex-Patriot for Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. The "absolute ninjas" at the studio are developing core games out of Eastern Europe, Hawkins says. "It's costing us pretty much the same as UK development would... But the quality we get out of it is fantastic," he says. Kuju also has a sister company called Doublesix Digital Publishing which is focused on creating games for the Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network space -- "there's a lot of the same people, there's overlap, we share the same corporate functions. I'm very much involved in it, but it's not kind of directly part of Kuju," says Hawkins. With no publisher "fishing around" to buy Kuju, says Hawkins, "we're very, very independent." Living in "Exciting Times" "It is exciting times. Some independent developers have found it a little tough; the last two years frankly have been a bit rubbish," he admits. But over the last year the company has "really turned a corner" and "things are looking on an upward trajectory again," he says, thanks to increased demand for new titles -- partially created by the fact some studios closed. But have market conditions forced the company to sign bad deals? "In terms of the contractual terms, no," says Hawkins. "I would say that there's been one or two that haven't been as profitable as we'd like them to be, because we'd been squeezed maybe a little bit on the scope for budget." "But it can't go on forever; I mean, there is a limit to what you can produce as a quality product for that kind of budget. [Budget has been] squeezed, but it's not got to the point of being intolerable yet. It's still doable." Console Focus Continues Despite shifts in the market toward social and mobile, Kuju is primarily sticking to its roots. "Console, by a big margin, is still the biggest portion of our market... We have done small amounts of iPhone and iPad work, and a couple of browser games as well. But still, I would say well over 90 percent of our market is console." While the economics of console development can be challenging, Hawkins counters that "the economics of browser and social and online can be pretty challenging as well. Unless you get a big runaway hit, then yeah, it can be difficult." "Yeah, it is true that the budgets for big console games have gone up and up, and it can be tough to do them at a decent profit margin, but it is possible, and we are achieving it." The current market shift "doesn't feel any more chaotic than anything else I've witnessed in the last five, 10, 15 years," says Hawkins. The Future of Kuju The company plans to open "hopefully, a fourth studio to add to that mix," on top of current studios, he says. "That may be something else again -- entirely on a particular area of the market that we can make money out of." What's hazier is whether or not the company will build internal tech to the extent it used to -- tech decisions are made on a game-by-game basis now, and internal tech is "a big risk", says Hawkins. "It's a big gamble, particularly when the platforms on the market are changing so much, there's a potential to waste money." "I mean, if you get technology reused in three or four projects, or more, you do start to see a return on that investment, but it's a risk," he says.