Disclaimer: In Real Life is a platform for everyday people to share their experiences and voices. All articles are personal stories and do not necessarily echo In Real Life’s sentiments.
Years ago, being a gamer would earn you the Grand Loser title – it was lame. Here in Malaysia, gaming was associated either with dingy cyber cafes filled with sweaty pubescent teenage boys smoking and playing hooky, or nerdy kids with thick glasses sitting in their parents’ computer room(because we had those back then) playing MapleStory.
Fast forward to now, the gaming industry is now knocking Hollywood off its pedestal having made almost 200 billion US dollars in revenue in 2021.
Saqina Latif grew up on consoles like the Nintendo 64. How could she have known while playing Buffy the Vampire Slayer on her first GameBoy that years later she would meet one of the people who worked on the game and he would become one of her mentors.
A prototype the founders collaborated on was played by Markiplier and Jacksepticeye!
Long before it’s inception, Persona Theory Games’ co-founders Buddy Anwardi, Saqina Latif, and Derek Mui were approached by a group of developers who were stuck on a prototype for half a year.
Youtuber Markiplier playing Sara Is Missing
That prototype eventually became a hit, a mobile game called Sara Is Missing. The game went on to win the SEA Independent Mobile Games Award and was played by gaming Youtube royalty Markiplier and Jacksepticeye.
After the success of Sara Is Missing, Persona Theory Games was born as the founders felt like games were a good medium to tell the stories they wanted to tell.
Persona Theory Games is a Malaysian indie narrative games studio who take pride in telling Southeast Asian stories through their games.
Creating personal stories by Malaysians for Malaysians
In the thick of the pandemic in 2020, Persona Theory Games released Fires At Midnight, a visual novel style game about relationships and trauma – not exactly your Gang Beasts or Jackbox Party type fun.
“Most games serve as a tool to escape. Your work doesn’t allow you to express who you are, and then you come home and interact with content that, again, doesn’t serve yourself.
“A great example is the Kardashians. They don’t care about you. You can’t even relate to their stories. If you play games like that, you won’t ‘meet yourself’ the entire day.” Co-founder Buddy tells In Real Life.
“The stories we tell are more personal. They come from our own experiences and are about Malaysia because that’s who we are, we should tell Malaysian stories. We believe that by sharing these moments with different people, we can help them feel less alone.”
Gameplay for Fires At Midnight
Fires At Midnight was a heavy game that touched on being disconnected from loved ones and the reception for it was amazing. Players could resonate with it emotionally and that in turn validated Persona Theory’s philosophy of how they design their games.
No support from local bodies
Their upcoming game ‘Kabaret’ which is set to be released by the end of the year is an adventure game heavily laced with monsters and legends from Southeast Asian folklore. The story unfolds through the eyes of Jebat, a cursed boy who is uprooted from his small town to a mystical, violent, and unforgiving monster realm.
Gameplay for Kabaret
“We applied and pitched to many local publishers and government grants but they said it was too exotic for the international market. Kabaret was shut down a lot and Buddy felt like we should give up on it.” Saqina tells In Real Life
Buddy said, “It was a bit ridiculous. At one point I was on a call and I couldn’t even be bothered because I knew what these guys were like. Saqina went ahead and pitched anyway, and after we answered one of the panellists’ questions, he laughed at us!
“Why would you disrespect someone who sacrificed so much on a project like that, are we here to entertain you? I don’t see how this sort of behaviour could encourage future generations. It definitely discouraged us. I can safely say that we have not gotten any support locally(in terms of pitching/funding) since our inception”
Making it on ID@Xbox alongside games like Among Us and Overcooked!
Saqina then pitched Kabaret to Wings, a collective of game developers across the EU/US who invest in women-led or underrepresented teams. The board unanimously agreed that Kabaret was wonderful and needed to be made and were highly supportive.
It was through Wings that they were introduced to Xbox who then signed them on to ID@Xbox followed by the opportunity to bring Kabaret as a representative of Malaysia at the Xbox showcase, validating their presence in the indie games industry.
“We’re definitely more celebrated overseas and supported by the likes of A MAZE Berlin. It’s sad to say it’s not the same locally at all.”
The importance of representation
With PC(politically correct) culture and the never ending debate of cultural appropriation, many creatives are always under fire and being accused of piggybacking off and bastardising cultures – a prime example being Walt Disney’s animation, Raya and the Last Dragon. Surely it does not apply here?
Gameplay for Kabaret
“What is authentic? We never pretend to be that. We don’t try to preserve culture, that is not our job. We are Malaysians telling a Malaysian story and we try to do it in a responsible way, we portray what we grew up with. We understand the difference between stealing and representing.
“We are not perfect people and there is no way to avoid offending others, but if you let that stop you, you can never make anything.” says Buddy.
Saqina adds “When people first discover the trailer of Kabaret, the comments are usually like ‘I never thought I’d see something like that in an Xbox game!’ It’s always celebrated. They’re excited to see something they recognise. They see our culture being represented in this big sexy snake woman and they think it’s amazing.”
The main theme for Kabaret, ‘Song of Mothers’ was a collaboration between Persona Theory Games and SambaSunda, an Indonesia based band, and was recently premiered in this year’s Save&Sound event.
Paving the way for aspiring game developers – here’s their advice
“Don’t do it. Making games is very difficult. If you want to be useful to your family, become a doctor.” Buddy jokes. “If you have some weird passion you want to share with the world, games are the best thing. You can reach so many people with it. If you’re crazy, do it.”
“There are so many resources nowadays. You don’t even need to know programming to create a game! There are things like game jams where winners get seed money and mentorships, loads of opportunities to work with bigger studios. As much as I disagree with how big corporations are run, if I were young again living in this era, I would jump at a chance to work at Capcom in Singapore. All of it is experience.” says Saqina.
The Persona Theory Games team in the interview with IRL! Top: Creative Director Buddy Anwardi, Techncal Lead Ahmad Helmi, Art Director Michelle Lee. Bottom: Managing Director Saqina Latif, Game Designer Joshua Wong, Narrative Writer Alvin Lai
The Nike tagline seemed to come up a lot, “Just Do It”. Take it from the team at Persona Theory themselves, each having landed in the company almost serendipitously. Lead programmer Helmi was their booth neighbour at Animangaki, and Game Writer Alvin was recruited from their discord server!
You can find Persona Theory on Instagram, Twitter, and even join their Discord server!
Know anyone with an interesting story to share? Drop us an email at hello@inreallife.my and we may feature the story!
For more stories like this, read:
“Pontianak, Rick & Morty-Fied” – How These Malaysians Created A World-Class Cartoon DURING MCO
5 Talented Malaysians Created A Horror Game to Help People Understand Smoking Addiction
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