Behind the scenes - OpenOko

I had the pleasure to bid a visit to OpenOko, small Polish game development company, and spend some time with Marcin, the lead programmer and, incidentally, my friend from high school.

Hidden in one of the numerous XIX century tenement houses of my hometown of Łódź, the studio occupies surprisingly nice apartment - in contrast to very steampunk'ish (to put it diplomatically) interiors through which a visitor has to find his way first.

The corridors and staircases leading to OpenOko could
one day be used as a level in one of their games

So far the team has produced a couple of very low-budget games that they are still ashamed of (judging by the fact they are not listed on their official site) and one more complete product - Dragonblade : Treasure of the Cursed Lands. The game has been distributed in Russia by Akella and entered the top five of best selling games by the end of 2006. Curiously enough, you won't find a mention about it on their English website, only in Russian - click here to see it. In Poland you can buy the game in 3Kropki internet shop - check that it has different cover artwork.

Dragonblade trailer on YouTube

Dragonblade is definitely not Half Life 2, that's true, the influences of Witcher and Painkiller are obvious and the game has its share of issues, right, but nevertheless it features some interesting models, good lighting, and generally allows the player to get some shooting/fighting action in dark fantasy world. On a side note, I dare say that the main protagonist bears slight resemblance to Dante from Devil May Cry as well - but maybe it's just me. If you want to learn more, here you can download the offical English game presentation.

Dragnoblade : Treasure of the Cursed Lands

Unfortunately, in Polish reality the choice is simple - either the game costs 20PLN (about 7 USD) and sells in large number of copies, or it costs 50PLN (18USD) and sells in too few copies for the company to make a living.

The reason for it is the fact that target demographic are essentially male gamers 12 to 16 years old - they are the majority of game market audience. For them lack of originality (yet another 3D shooter) is not a problem, because they want another game similar to what they already know. They don't have too high expectations of cheap games either, because being realistic in their judgements they can tell the difference between Valve and OpenOko. And they definitely don't have big budget to spend on the game.

Therefore, it boils down to sad, but unfortunately very real-life choice : either you make a very polished game, which impacts development time and the cost of final product to the point where it becomes not commercially profitable, or you consciously make a game of lesser quality, but the development cost is lower and therefore the gain margin allows you to keep on going.

Inquisitor - one of the titles in development by OpenOko

If you are a gamer for longer time (like me), you surely remember one or two studios that gave us truly great titles and then ceased to exist due to financial reasons? Well, the economic reality in Poland is even more harsh than in States, therefore managing a game development studio requires making this kinds of difficult decisions.

But don't worry, with every accomplished project the arsenal of tricks and special effects that OpenOko team has up their sleeve increases. Each new game contains some elements which may then be used in the next games, such as nice bloom effect, very realistic water, lens effects, smarter AI and so on.

Please note the water reflections, the haze effect and the amount of detail in weapon

Already their new project is shaping up nicely, judging by what I have been shown during my visit. Contrary to what you may read on OpenOko website, the next project is going to be a tactical shooter, codenamed GBR (from Russian Grupa Bystrego Reagirowania - Quick Response Group, as in "armed response"). Probably you will be the first ones to discover the screenshots from the game - it is in fact an exclusive.

GBR feels right at home - is it a Russian truck under the crane?

This is of course work in progress, as you can observe (no commands on the menu yet, lots of debugging info, minor glitches), but I have to say I was positively impressed by the overall quality of what I was shown, especially taking into account the number of people working on it. It was also very interesting to see how the features developed for current project are already being considered for application in future titles.

I really hope that OpenOko will survive on the market and continue to deliver new titles, each next one better than the previous ones. Good luck, guys!