Jamaica should capitalise on brand in game, film industries

With a passion for game development, 18-year-old computing major Enoch Omoregie believes that Jamaica has a great opportunity to capitalise on its brand to advance its game and film production.

While the 18-year-old University of Technology, Jamaica (UTech) student notes that the consumer side of the local gaming industry is booming, he said the development aspect of the sector is not as well known.

“We know about these things in Jamaica – films and games – but when it comes to developing our own things that have the Jamaica brand on it, that’s where I think that more things need to happen,” he said in a recent Gleaner interview, noting that more funding and other resources were needed to boost the industry’s potential.

The third-year UTech student was one of many pupils from the School of Computing and Information Technology who showcased their inventions in the technology exposition portion of the university’s second annual Microsoft Day celebrations.

DASHKNIGHTS

His creation is a fast-paced action, endless runner PC game called Dashknights in which players must avoid obstacles to collect coins and survive encounters with opponents along the way to victory.

Omoregie’s early passion for video games and his desire to create narratives that would evoke pleasant feelings in users served as inspirations when he decided to pursue game creation. He tapped his skills to create aesthetically captivating storylines to entice his target audience.

“In high school, my friend introduced me to Blender 3D software and gaming, and stuff like that, and then I found out that there was an industry that actually does these things, which would be the gaming and film [industry], and I remember being in that place where I didn’t know that there was this avenue,” he told The Gleaner.

“I thought that only a select [few] could actually do this stuff, but then I realised that it’s actually open to all of us, and then that’s when I became inspired not only to make games, but to introduce it to Jamaica, that this is a thing that you can do, too,” Omoregie shared.

The game, which was previously in a testable demonstration (demo) phase, has recently been brought back into development with no release date identified, according to Omoregie, president of UTech’s Game Development and Film Club (GDF), which has roughly 40 active members.

The basic prototype of the game, he said, took approximately four months to construct. Getting feedback from his peers and other university colleagues was part of the initial testing process.

ADDING COMPLEXITY

“I remember playing Subway Suffers when I was young, and it was popular, ... [but] I remember [that] after a while, just dodging [obstacles] and running got boring. So it turns out that the company that made Subway Suffers also made another game ( Blades of Brim), where you can actually attack enemies ... and I was, like, ‘This layer of complexity added so much [more]’,” said Omoregie.

As such, he intends to develop a PC game that would operate using a levelling system, where players would be able to “walk around in a world, encounter enemies, and then be transported to the level ... like an open-world game where you can run around in the city, so it would be a mix of two things”.

In keeping with its motto, ‘The World is Our Reference, Our Imagination is Our Canvas’, UTech’s GDF Club seeks to inform and mentor members on how to build effective pipelines to produce completed games and films. Its short-term goal is to be able to complete a gaming demo and a short film on the game to present to the public by year-end.

“Based on how we see the returns on that, we will move on to further plans and monetisation,” Omoregie said.

For his own path, he is optimistic that in the future, he will be able to travel abroad to learn more about the industry then return to Jamaica to establish a game or film studio to produce movies and video games locally.

“Genuinely, we’re just really passionate about this type of thing ... and we really just want to get to showing the country that this is an industry that Jamaicans can pursue and we can successfully do going forward,” he added.

asha.wilks@gleanerjm.com