PALGN: To start off with, can you tell us a little about yourself and what your role at IR Gurus is?
Mike Fegan: My background was in sales & marketing in the toy industry and the company I worked with back then had a relationship with Nintendo dating back to the post WW2 era in Japan.
I started in the interactive entertainment business in the 8-bit cartridge days when Nintendo’s NES and Sega’s Master System were going ‘head to head’ on an international basis. My official position at IR Gurus is CEO but I really regard myself as the team captain who helps the side to kick goals on a consistent basis.
PALGN: It’s recently been announced that Red Mile Entertainment will soon acquire IR Gurus’ outstanding shares, effectively making them a subsidiary of the company. What was the initial reason behind the agreement?
MF: The initial reason for the deal was to establish IR Gurus as a global top 20 game development studio in the next two years, but to do this we needed access to big capital that you just can’t currently find in Australia. Therefore, we felt that effectively merging our company with an already publicly listed company in the USA would provide us the financial muscle we needed to achieve this ambition.
PALGN: How will the acquisition affect IR Gurus’ infrastructure?
MF: We don’t see the way we operate changing much post-acquisition as the Red Mile guys have basically told us to “keep doing what you’re doing” and that is to build world-class proprietary tools & technology as well as original IP like our Heroes of the Pacific game that hopefully will create long term franchises that lead that particularly game genre.
However, through the deal we will see a substantial investment made in IR Gurus’ infrastructure through initiatives like a much larger R&D budget for our internal systems group, more capital expenditure for hardware and software in PCs, PS3 & XB360 development and test kits across the studio and generally creating a great working environment for our personnel.
A photo of Mike Fegan.
PALGN: Last year, you told PALGN that plans were underway to increase your staff from 102 to 150 people in 2007. Has this been implemented or have your staffing needs changed since then?
MF: We are currently on track to hit this target in 2007 but when you add up the people already currently employed or contracted at IR Gurus we would be well over 200 people working on our various projects. We also don’t really want to go beyond 150 full time staff as the IR Gurus management believe that in our case this is the optimum number to manage effectively in order to get the best out of our people.
PALGN: The GDAA (Game Developer’s Association of Australia) have recently made headlines by urging the Australian government to support local game development studios with a 40% tax rebate similar to the film industry. Do you support this motion and feel it could be of great benefit to developers Australia-wide?
MF: I am 110% in support of the GDAA on this matter as I know from spending literally years of my life knocking on the doors of overseas game publishers that at the end of the day ALL international publisher’s are ‘risk adverse’ and if you can in anyway help them to alleviate their perceived risk in a project they will look upon your deal proposal favourably.
Also, as an industry we are already currently falling behind production capabilities in other countries that have been heavily subsidised by Governments like those in Canada and China.
These initiatives have literally created thousands of jobs and spawned hundreds of independent development companies that have the potential to do it better than we can if we don’t watch out.
In order to combat this competition we now need far more ‘deal flow’ in production contracts that are stimulated by federal government financial incentives or the opportunity to firmly establish Australia as a true hot bed of game development will be lost forever!
I would also say that the GDAA is not looking for a handout here, it simply wants an ‘even playing field’ from the federal government to the same level as that which the local Film & TV production industry enjoys.
PALGN: As a leading Aussie developer, do you feel Australia has a major impact on the industry as a whole?
MF: Not yet, but we certainly have the potential to be a big part of it when you look at what Auran in Brisbane are already doing in the MMOG space with Fury, Irrational Games in Canberra have done with the brilliant Bioshock PC game and Infinite Interactive here in Melbourne have done in the casual games category.
This is great stuff, but in order to build momentum here we need to be consistently delivering high quality games to the world and we can’t do that without consistent production deal flow on a major scale.
This year's AFL Grand Final was shocking - for Port Power fans at least.
PALGN: Can you tell us a little bit about the future for the AFL Premiership series? Will IR Gurus affiliation with Sony continue for possible future iterations of the series?
MF: Firstly, I must say we have enjoyed an excellent working relationship with Sony over the last three years and IR Gurus look forward to building more AFL games in the future but this really is a Sony decision as they hold the AFL licensing rights.
Secondly, IR Gurus is busy building our ‘sports stadium’ technology for next generation systems so we will be ready in the foreseeable future when & if this decision is made to deliver a high quality result as we are still very passionate about our football around here!
PALGN: Heatseeker was one of the first titles for IR Gurus on the Wii, we’re consistently hearing that third party titles don’t sell as well on the Wii, did you find this to be the case with Heatseeker?
MF: As a studio IR Gurus were very proud of what we achieved with the Heatseeker as we set out to build a really fun game that you could simply pick up and play without all the set up paraphernalia associated with most jet combat games on the market. It is all about epic dog fights and blowing stuff up!
In our view, this really suited the Wii as it has a very broad audience and our guys did an excellent job with the Wii controller to give the gamer an even more enjoyable experience.
However, at the end of the day the consumer makes the final choice and I think in hindsight at the time of Heatseeker’s release the Wii market wasn’t quite ready for a game that suited an older demographic.
In relation to third party games selling over first party game titles, I would say that ultimately you are in the hands of the consumer and all the developer should focus on is building the best game possible within the time and production budget allowed by the publisher.
PALGN: Currently, you are developing Heroes Over Europe, a sequel to your popular Heroes of the Pacific game. Can you give us some details on the upcoming project?
MF: We can’t say much at the moment, but I can say based on current work in progress we will definitely lead this game genre. I’ll leave it to our marketing guys to give you a lot more information when the time comes.
Heatseeker didn't quite live up to expectations.
PALGN: Why do you think IR Gurus has become a well-known name over the past eleven years since its founding?
MF: I think even though we have been around a while we are only really starting to build an international reputation as a well known game development studio. We have cut our teeth on creating the world’s first PC equestrian games and what we call regional hit games like AFL in Australia and Gaelic Games Football in Ireland, which put us in good stead to make the leap into the global arena.
Heroes of the Pacific really gave us good international recognition and I am happy to say that the publishers we have worked with, over the last four years especially, keep coming back for more which is always a good sign.
I think the main reason we have been able to build a name in the business has been our excellent people and a testament to their ability. They have produced seventeen SKU's over seven game titles in the last eighteen months, which is second-to-none as a single console development studio compared to anywhere in the world.
PALGN: Taking into account the new agreement with Red Mile Entertainment, where do you see IR Gurus in the future?
MF: A Top 20 development studio in the World in the next two years!!!
______________________________________
PALGN would like to thank Mike Fegan and IR Gurus for taking the time to answer these questions. For more information on IR Gurus, you can check out their official web site by clicking here.
Loading...
