Think Global: Robert Muresan On Gaming and Game Development
Imagine living in a future where your dreams come true.
This isn’t about reaching your goals, though that would be an excellent future too.
This is about literal dreams, the ones you have when you go to sleep at night.
Robert Muresan thinks that it will be possible for you to give a visual shape to your dreams by means of virtual reality.
Not only experiencing them on a small screen but actually being able to explore them by yourself like you would take a walk in the park.
Pretty exciting, right?
What about going into a big challenging adventure inside a video game, trying to defeat enemies and complete quests?
It sounds pretty rad, too.
This is what Robert thought was the future.
He thought that virtual reality will become so big and overwhelming that everyone will be able to experience it.
But until then, the usual video games had to do.
But that’s not bad.
The usual video games are a big industry.
Because they’re great entertainment.
If you ever thought about going into game development, Robert’s story might strike home.
Knowledge as a main quest
But you have to start somewhere.
And education is a good square one.
This is the thing I’ve always emphasized: getting a good solid education. — Robert Muresan
He has always been interested in the logical side of the world, its mechanisms and tricks to better our everyday lives.
He was very passionate about physics, maths, and chemistry, reading a lot of books on the subjects because he wanted to find out every little detail about anything.
It was these books that proved to be extremely useful to him later in life.
Game development is not just about coding.
You have to understand the world if you plan on emulating it.
The video game mindset
I have never touched a computer until high school. — Robert Muresan
But as soon as he did, his sights were set on computer science.
He had never touched a computer until then, but it was love at first sight.
The small unit would offer Robert the possibility to delve into a new world when he discovered both programming and video games.
It was something unheard of for him, two doors that once opened would go on to enhance his imagination and curiosity.
He would play a lot of video games, developing a pure passion for them, spending countless nights in front of the screen, experiencing virtual stories, adventures and completing quests.
Knowledge as a side quest
He enrolled in the Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, studying, of course, computer science.
In three years of college, he would focus on research, math and 3D graphics.
He made a friend from Australia and together they started to develop their own video games. He dropped out of college after a couple of years and focused exclusively on starting a game development studio.
He created the famous Hacker Evolution series, a browser-based video game that would go on to become extremely successful reaching no. 4 on Steam, the world’s largest online games publisher platform.
He currently works as a business manager and lead designer at exosyphen studios and is a managing partner at Axiom Gaming.
Regarding the names of the companies, he says that they weren’t inspired by anything. But Robert is a reader at heart and a fan of horror and science fiction novels so imagination was never in short demand.
Remote team — the future of our workforce
His developing team is remote, meaning they all work from different places and Robert acts as a talent hunter.
He scouts the globe for the best software engineers, coders, game designers, animators, sound engineers and graphic artists in a sort of what he refers to as ‘the hunt’.
Most of the time he hunts down smart people and takes those who are good at what they do.
Turns out it is very easy to work with this kind of person, even remotely and the communication is excellent.
It’s because they’re all passionate about the projects they are working on.
Sometimes the tides turn and Robert becomes the one that is sought by enthusiasts that want to work for him and his company.
In either case, the selection process is very relaxed.
But once Robert hires someone, he can’t just call it a day.
Game development is also about breeding creativity.
Creativity should have no limits and deadlines
It usually takes years to come up with something innovative in gaming. — Robert Muresan
Another important asset in his company is that he and his team are not pressured by investors.
They understand the creative process may take some time to be fully implemented in a video game and he takes the proper time to expand ideas and develop them properly.
Then the team takes time to work on them, fix the bugs and polish the game or the app.
That can take anywhere from a few months to a few years.
But a good product requires time and effort.
Robert is aware of that so they keep a stress free environment, unbothered by deadlines.
Projects should be interesting first
He is looking for projects in his spare time, but there are not so many interesting ones around.
He would love to invest and become an investor and thinks about starting a fund.
But the pitching process doesn’t grind his gears.
So if it’s not interesting, he doesn’t give into it.
And VR was very interesting
VR (virtual reality) is offering you a whole new way of seeing things. — Robert Muresan
Robert believed that eventually, it will change the whole industry because it will go hand in hand with the gameplay and means of interaction in a virtual world.
But functional VR would not only be the next big thing in gaming. Its applicability means that it could change the way we interact with technology as well.
It would have a major impact in the software world. You should be able to touch everything and visualize information in real-time.
It’s only going to get exponentially bigger in terms of what you want to do and see.
Robert developed a project involving VR: having a whole city be locked in a wide frame and adding all kinds of data, from social media, public webcams so it would give the player/customer the chance to virtually explore the place, choosing what to visit or where to go while various details would pop up.
Those were the hopes of a few years ago, but VR didn’t catch on as people hoped it would. It’s hard to use, not that cheap and it makes a lot of people physically sick.
The technology might still have a future.
But the products came a bit before their time.
We shouldn’t look back with grief though.
Every failure is an opportunity to learn.
And do better next time.
Video games are interesting anyways
But even if video games will be wrapped in virtual reality, ultimately it is all up to the people and most of the time people just love good games.
They can be 32-bit or hyper-realistic, they can be made by indie companies or AAA studios, it doesn’t really matter.
Flappy Bird was made by a single person with rudimentary graphics but it was very addicting and managed to become extremely profitable.
Selling video games should also become more interesting
People should be able to choose their preferred price when buying a game, generating a win-win situation.
Robert wants to change the way people are purchasing video games in this way.
Nobody can afford to spend money sometimes so they should be able to procure them at a lower price.
In places like Asia, Russia, and Latin America, the markets are huge so developing video games for these regions would surely turn out to be profitable.
That is one of the main goals of Robert’s vision regarding the globalization of his games: reaching as many places as possible and having people enjoying them.
You’ve got to find the optimal way to get a product to a customer if you want to drive sales. — Robert Muresan
The other more traditional forms of advertising such as social media marketing don’t help that much. In his opinion, they are a waste of time. It’s all in the way you sell it and the regions that are available and included in the selling plan.
Another way of getting your game to a wider audience is to consider developing it for PC, not consoles since PCs are way more popular and everyone has one.
Moreover, he thinks that it should be in fact the best option when developing a game.
It’s easier to develop, you have a lot of open-source resources and you can open it up to a community of modders to make your game live longer.
So you want to be a game developer?
You should think big and consider expanding your business to a global market when thinking about investing in the gaming-related industry.
Growth is essential, especially if you are thinking about the financial side of your company.
It cannot be linear; it has to constantly grow but it cannot stay the same.
You have to get to a point where your revenue is bigger than your input.
You have to think big right from the start and build with a global audience in mind.
You have to make a long term plan because if you really want to achieve something great you have to keep in mind that you will need exponential growth.
With the knowledge available on the internet, it’s all up to you.
Don’t dig through the past
Looking back, dropping out of college and starting his company was the best decision he ever made.
On the other hand, he thinks he hasn’t made a bad decision yet.
Sheer luck?
Probably not. He knew what he was doing.
He never thought about the local market and up to this day, he doesn’t have a lot of knowledge on the subject.
His main goal was the global one because that is where success awaits.
He wouldn’t change anything if he were to start it all over again tomorrow.
He would make the same decisions and he would follow the same steps.
His only hope for the future, aside from the excitement about VR, is his desire for faster processors.
We already live in the age of speed.
Let’s take it up a notch.
