Unlocking South Africa's talent through co-development

05.03.2024 - 09:45 / gamesindustry.biz

You can read all our South Africa Games Week articles on this page.

The South African games industry has a long history of work-for-hire firms supporting some of the biggest developers worldwide, with several studios specialising successfully in porting and co-development. Six Peaks Games is one of them and, while technically a newcomer, it has decades of experience under its belt.

It was founded in 2022 by Jason Ried – a games industry veteran who started in games in 2003 and spent the first eight years of his career in QA and production roles across Eidos and Disney Interactive Studios, in the UK where he lived for ten years. In 2011, he founded Fuzzy Logic, a mobile games studio that eventually became specialised in AR and VR across various sectors.

Still managing director at Fuzzy Logic, Ried is now also CEO of Six Peaks Games, and was keen to settle back in South Africa for his next adventure.

"[Fuzzy Logic] became very boring; I mean that in a nice way," he smiles. "It was successful, but we were doing training for mining companies and automotive. That company, ironically, had moved to the UK. So, we've still got it, and I'm a director in it, but it's not something I was quite happy working in every day.

"And so over a year ago, a few of the core team left, and we started Six Peaks to go back into games. We're doing co-development, porting, QA, and we're actually working with colleagues that I used to work with at Disney."

He mentions industry veteran Jason Avent (former Boss Alien founder) and his new studio, Hardball Games, which launched last year in Brighton, UK.

"We're their co-dev partner, and the whole idea is we're just integrated with them," Ried continues. "We're working on [OutRage] long-term, we're doing development out in South Africa alongside them. We're doing some art, and we're building a very big QA studio for them, and for other devs that we're working with."

Six Peaks is embedded in Hardball's team and, on the flip side for the Brighton studio, they "get great talent who speak English and are in a convenient time zone, but at a slightly lower rate," Ried says.

"There are so many South Africans that want to work on big budget games... When I was in the UK, there were so many, but they don't get the opportunity. And so they want to come home for family reasons, and this is a way we see of giving them that exposure to AA and AAA without having to live over there."

Six Peaks is also hoping to work with additional clients as the company grows. It currently employs 12 people, with Ried estimating that seven or eight people could be hired throughout the upcoming months, with the hope to reach 30 staff by the end of the year.

While it's working primarily with Hardball for the time being, the