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KHAL SHARIFF, CEO, PROJECT WHITECARD.
“It was with profound pleasure that when I moved back to Winnipeg, strong industry support was waiting, Competent and engaged in helping us found Project Whitecard and make our company a success.”
News

Teens take leap into Cyberspace

March 02, 2010

It may have cost him some of his high school social life, but in many ways Sean Oosterveen is living the dream.

For the last three and half years, the 18-year-old graduate of Vincent Massey Collegiate has been working on developing an online fantasy role-playing game called Aerrevan that is to be commercially launched later this year.

"I've been interested in video games since my brain was capable of playing them," he said. "From the time I could figure out math equations, I was building cheap 3-D game creation tools. It has really been my entire life."

With his partner, Graeme Borland, also 18, and Sean's father, Neil, an independent consultant and entrepreneur, they have taken the leap from out of the basement into cyberspace.

In the last couple of years, they have raised more than $1 million from family, friends and other investors, have assembled a team of 17 freelance artists and developers from around the world and have started building hype on websites and MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) blogs. One of them, plybg.com, lists Aerrevan as the 13th most anticipated game in 2010.

The development plan calls for beta users to be lined up early this year for a commercial launch of Aerrevan later in 2010.

Neil Oosterveen said it was a seven-year process to get to where they are now.

"When Sean and Graham were younger, they would work on little gaming programs on the weekends, but it quickly became obvious that they had some magic," he said. "The things they were doing were spectacular."

About three and a half years ago, after funding their projects out of his pocket -- "It was good for me because this was keeping them off the street" -- Neil said the three of them got together and decided if they really wanted to keep doing it, they needed to have a business side to their efforts.

(Up until recently, they had been operating as 13th Hour Studio, but because of problems registering that name their company is now called Cube Force Media.)

Neil said the opportunity to produce a commercially acceptable massively multiplayer online (MMO) game really came about when they were able to buy the assets of a distressed operation in the United States that gave them access to a more powerful game engine.

Sean and Graham -- along with six other local gaming companies and a large group of Digital Multi-Media Technology students from Red River College -- are heading to San Francisco March 10 to present at a booth at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the world's largest gaming industry event.

The group is sponsored by the government-funded Game-On Manitoba and New Media Manitoba.

"This is a major industry event," said Sean. "It will give us credibility and get the name out there. There's about 17,000 people who attend the event who are serious about the business."

But just being there is obviously no guarantee of success, with many other developers -- many with budgets that would dwarf Aerrevan's -- going after a crowded online role-playing game market.

Noah Decter-Jackson, chapter organizer for the local International Game Developers Association, said it is exciting to see a new company with such an ambitious project come out of nowhere in Manitoba.

"We really didn't even know about them until our group saw a presentation last month," said Decter-Jackson, whose own Winnipeg company, called Complex Games, will also be attending the GDC.

"It shows a lot of promise and it is such an ambitious challenge. It's very impressive."

Unlike other start-up game companies in the province, the Oosterveens have kept their enterprise and Aerrevan on the down low and have not availed themselves of industry support from New Media Manitoba or Game-On Manitoba until the San Francisco conference.

Neil said the thinking was that other gaming companies get involved in a lot of pre-launch hype and then interest wanes by the time the product is launched.

After the January presentation of Aerrevan to the local game developers group, Decter-Jackson wrote, "Every once and a while a new face appears from out of the woodwork and reminds you that we've barely scratched the surface of the potential for Manitoba's game development industry."

martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca

The World of MMORPG (short for "massively multiplayer online role-playing game")

10 -- the number of new games launched in North America every month.

13 -- Aerrevan's ranking of anticipated new releases on the website playbbg.com.

11.5 million -- the number of monthly subscribers for World of Warcraft, the most popular MMORPG, at the end of 2008. With a fee of about $15 per month that comes to annual revenue of about $2 billion.

100-plus -- the number of developers involved in a typical large scale MMORPG release.

17 -- the number of people working on the launch of Aerrevan.

What is Aerrevan about

Aerrevan takes place on the continent of Lurris in a world shattered by the onset of a magical force known as Aer. Aer has strong magical qualities, but is also highly toxic. It has been four years since the Baehoman meteor struck Lurris, bringing with it this toxic element. When the meteor struck, Aer was unevenly dispersed around the world. Many died and others became mutated, turning into horrible creatures. The gameplay experience in Aerrevan is centralized around Aer and its effects on the world.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 27, 2010 B4


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