A Decade Unveiled: The Brazilian Indie Game Scene's Transformative Journey

Wonderful. Glad to see everyone here. I know it's early, 9:30, first session of Tuesday, but uh we're super super excited to have you here with us. So, first of all, we're going to start our panel and uh you're going to have a blast. We had a blast preparing it, and I'm very sure that you're going to enjoy it as well. Uh remember to silence or at least turn off your phones, just so uh you don't get distracted by it, and um if you did scan your badge at the entrance, later after the session, and I'm going to remind this at the end as well, you're going to get a um evaluation form. And it means a lot if you could take the time to evaluate this talk and share your thoughts. And uh just yeah, that feedback is always valuable. So, just a quick reminder for that. And with that said, I think we're ready to get started. Okay. Then, officially now, good morning and welcome to our panel. As you can see, a decade

unveiled, the Brazilian indie game scene's transformative journey. I'm Arthur Protazio, and you may be surprised to learn that this sequel is actually, sorry, this talk is actually a sequel to a talk that we gave, Bruno and I, 10 years ago here at GDC. That was actually at the localization summit uh back in 2014. And uh at that talk, we explored the state of the Brazilian game industry as an emerging and budding game development scene. Today, of course, we're back 10 years later to show how things have changed. Why? Because, just a quick show of hands here, how many Brazilians we have in the house? Amazing. Which is also super cool that we have a lot of people who are not necessarily from Brazil. So, our focus here is to talk about developing countries, to talk about Latin America, and to talk about what has changed. We're at a turning point, and over the past decade, the Brazilian game development community has grown from around 100 studios to over 1,000 companies employing about 10,000 individuals, but it's not just not just

about the numbers. This reflects a significant cultural and global shift with 57% of sales now targeting international markets. And behind those numbers and changes, there are people. Look at us. People make Brazil a diverse country and at the same time play a significant role in the industry by forging different unconventional paths. That's why we've assembled an amazing range of speakers with unique and instrumental experiences. From developers to scholars, each will share their stories and lessons learned highlighting collective and individual actions that have shaped the Brazilian game development scene in recent years. So, join us as we explore the transformative journey of the Brazilian indie game scene reviewing the past, shaping the present, and envisioning the future. Now, to kick us off and to get us started, let's welcome first speaker BRUNO CAMPAGNOLO. WOO! WOO!

THANK YOU, ARTHUR. OKAY. HI, I'M BRUNO Campagnolo de Paula and I lead the gaming course at PUC Paraná. I'm from Curitiba, the land of capybaras. Um and I also organize the Global Game Jam Curitiba. I love to organize jams and play parties and I think these kind of events are really important for us in Brazil to get better at making games. They make our community unique and I think others can benefit from that, too. And I'm sure of that mainly because of what happened in the first professional job I had at industry at Continuum Entertainment. But before explain this, I want to tell you a little what Global Game Jam Curitiba is. Um in the last 15 years our jam has become one of the world's biggest and most productive game jams, attracting around 500 regular jammers and nearly

100 games each year. I'm proud that our jam inspired many new developers to start in the industry. And I began organizing this jam because I was sad. Really sad. Okay, my mission is to talk a little bit about Brazil over the last 10 years since our last talk, okay? But but I also want to tell you a little about my personal journey. My personal journey first. Um, I've been making games as a hobby since the '90s, okay? But my professional journey began at Continuum Entertainment, one of Brazil's pioneering international companies. Sadly, after two years of hard work and a superb game, um, we had Infernal, a unique hell simulator with a truly advanced AI and lots of humor. The company shut down, okay? Because it ran out of money, okay? Leaving me sad and deeply disappointed with game

development. And I did not want anyone else to face the same kind of disappointment as me. Large and non-competitive jams like ours inspire and teach how developers enjoy helping each other. And also make it clear in practice that we need more thematic diversity in games, and small games can help us to be better. But I have to make it clear, very clear. Jams should be used as an opportunity to elevate people, elevate people, more than creating games. In our jams we place the jammer in the center and he receives full support. Play parties are more than a celebration of the graded games. It is a celebration of the bonds between the people who produce the games. In this 10 years since our last presentation, I've seen jams like our hours establish themselves in Brazil as talents incubators, as part of the

Brazilian game development culture, and I am very proud to be part of this context. So, when the continuum broke down, I naturally shifted to a career in academia as a professor at games pro the games program at PUC Paraná, one of the top private universities in Brazil. My goal was to show others how to avoid such disappointments, or at the very least, how to handle these situations better. Well, but I was still sad, very sad, when I saw my students fail, imagining and even trying to create big big large games, but doomed it to failure. Then, I direct my work to more experimental small like games, and the games that do welcome failure, like game jam games, like game jam games, like the games we produce during Global Game Jam. So, 10 years ago, when I took over the coordination of our gaming course and

broke this jam vibe to our program, I was focusing on prototyping, publishing, implementing a constant feedback culture, and preparing the students to make small games before trying a big one. Then, we grew from 70 students to almost 300 now, and I feel very gratified when I see a student succeed with a game, but even more so when I see a student fail and continue to be motivated to stay in the field, keeping creating games. That was my story. Okay, I'm very happy now. Yes, okay, but I have the mission now to provide an overview of the Brazilian market before my friends here, okay, present their stories. So now I need to draw attention to some numbers, numbers about our market. Firstly, we're an emerging market, probably the 10th largest in the world, probably. And most

of the population plays and considers themselves gamers, okay? Half people prefer mobile gaming and games like Genshin Impact, Chinese games like Genshin Impact are strong, are strong part of the pop culture here. Unfortunately, we still have some problems like many countries. Just to give an idea, a PS5 here in Brazil costs five times the normal price. Top Apple products are almost impossible to have for most people because of taxes. The language barrier is still there. We speak Portuguese and many Brazilians do not speak English well and it doesn't look like it's getting better in the last 10 years. But even with these issues, our industry grows with a focus on external market and mainly producing entertainment games, we have grown from 200 to over 1,000 developer groups and from 2

thousand people to about 13,000 professionals since our last presentation. And these groups, as mentioned in our most recent research on Brazilian industry, are very different, very heterogeneous. From unicorns like Wildlife, companies focused on outsourcing like Kokku, large companies with international operations like Aquiris, now Epic Games Brazil from Sandro, medium devs like BitCake, indie devs like Thais from Joy Masher, and even groups of students who grow stronger in jams like our jam, like Manalits Studios from The Dungeon Draft Fest. And of course, we have Brazilians in global teams bringing our creativity and adaptability to another level. I'm very proud to have followed, for example, part of the Celeste team since the beginning of their international career. For me, it's a great emotion to have their presence in our first jams. By the

way, we have here Ana from Ivory, which made a very interesting partnership with Atari in her latest game. And to conclude about our ecosystem, we Brazilians love events and associations. We love to socialize and we are good at it. Some of the world's largest game events such as Big Festival, which is now Gamescom Latin America, okay, and BGS are huge and there is a strong role played by the national association AbraGames and our 17 regional associations. And of course, jams like Game Jam Plus and Women Game Jam and the even Global Game Jam Curitiba started in our domestic market. 10 years ago, this image summarized most of our Brazilian indie production, okay? Today, it's impossible to represent our

production in just one image. So, I'll close my presentation now and reuse here the image from the latest Brazilian bundles, which we have more than 500 games and call on my friends to continue to talk about their personal experience as game developers. Before calling my neighbor, Tais Weiler, she's my neighbor, really, to the stage, I want to remember my main takeaway for you, okay? Creating small games is the key to developing better game creators. Thank you very much, Thais. Hello everyone. Can you hear me okay? Great. So, I'm Thais. That's a weird name, I know, but that's what I'm called. Uh I'm in the industry for almost 15 years now. And uh when I talk about that, that sounds really exciting and really

professional and as if I know exactly what I was doing since the beginning. But the truth is, I started as a creator, a writer, a painter, and I sucked at it. And then I tried to work as a stylist. I was kind of good, but kind of also, and I had to get out of this field. But yeah, sure, let's do something else. So, I started doing headgear. I'm fascinated for headgear, as you can see, obviously. And this is a a Japanese technique called Kanzashi. I used to make a rice paste to do that, and it also failed. So, that's how I felt at 22 years old. I felt like that character in Undertale that I think we all can relate a little bit. Uh everything I tried was and nothing ever ends nowhere until I entered in the game industry.

And for the first time, I really felt like I was part of something. So, I'm going to continue talking about community as Bruno uh already started, but uh my point of view is that without community, people like me and a lot of the developers Brazil has now, well, some of their best developers, wouldn't be here. And I I to give some small uh tips of what worked for us. Maybe it worked for you, too, in your own countries and in your own situations. Maybe not, but let's see. I'll just start then. Uh, when I first joined the industry, I don't I never even thought it was a possibility, something you could do as, uh, a professional. You see, games were made by rich people from other countries, like Europe, the country Europe or the country USA. And, uh, it's impossible to do in Brazil, of

course. But, when I started, I saw, "No, there are a lot of people that already do that here." Uh, it was felt like it was an impossible thing to do, and still I was there. Uh, and when I entered, I discovered actually games were made in Brazil since the '80s. It's they're just not very talked about in anywhere else that is not the industry. So, you need to get into it to start hearing about it, which is not very good, right? Um, there were many, many dev groups already and many companies, but mostly there were people trying to create companies and not many people just doing games for the fun of it. There were people doing that, but they were smaller groups or they weren't very talked about. And people really didn't talk to each other. There were people that talked to each other, but small groups, not everybody. And I don't know if you notice, but Brazil is really big. It's almost as big as America.

So, it is hard for people from all over to talk. And then happened something very small, very little. I don't know if you guys heard of it, called Indie Game the Movie. Yeah. Almost no one knows that about that movie. Silly. But, uh, anyway, that movie had a great impact on our place, too, because even though it was a completely different reality from Brazil, it made indie developers feel empowered for the first time. They felt like they were seen. They felt like people cared about their games. And they they started talking to each other. So, that beautiful image Bruno showed us about with the main characters of our games in 2013, that's a result of that. People start talking, creating communities. And the difference in Brazil at the time filming the game the movie, Brazil was

completely different. There was no gay no funding from the government. Everything was done as a hobby, as a side job, as a hustle. Me, particular, I had two jobs at the same time just to keep making my games. Uh it was very very hard to get dev kits dev kits. Uh it's still hard, but it was almost impossible. You had to smuggle them, literally, almost as if they were drugs. Uh there weren't many companies present there. It was very hard to talk with a game publisher, for instance. There was almost no publisher presence. So, people start talking and creating groups and creating communities as as Bruno told, I don't know if that's a Brazilian thing, but we just like to be around people. It's crazy. So, students started creating small groups. We also had some artists creating some small groups. There are uh small What it started with is small

Discord servers for artists. Now, they are huge and they're creating their homes they're hosting bundles now. But, uh some junior developers starting getting together. And of course, the weirdos, that's my part. That's where I come in. And what we started doing. That's what, in my opinion, is different from most countries, or at least most first world countries. We started doing more informal gatherings. So, bars, expositions, it's more expositions. I remember a friend of mine made a exposition of Atari cartridges that were labels created by developers of imaginary games and games that they dreamed about making. And some people even did a game afterwards. Jams, specially Global Game Jam, it was one of the biggest of the world, right? It's amazing.

Especially hangouts, a lot of hangouts that generally happen at bars, but sometimes they happen elsewhere. Online forums start also being a big thing. We had a small community called Boteco Gamer. No one knows about that? But especially, the most important thing was the informal part of it. Because people started talking and got to knowing each other and to understanding each other and making connections. And that was the most important thing, at least at that moment for us. Because it made our our neighbors someone that we knew and we understand their problems and we fought with them to help them. And we also started to get to know people from all around, from very far places, like from the Amazon, from the northeast, from the south, and seeing that they have very similar

problems to our own. So, we started to workshop ideas and try to work together and understand what we need and have a language about that. We also started to know each other and know that we can work well together and starting to do That shouldn't happen. And starting doing collabs and other games and when people work together in bigger projects, they can make even greater games and with more ambitious ideas and more interesting concepts. And also, when we are together, we have bigger bargaining power. We can even be a bit louder and talk a little bit stronger and higher so people in higher places can hear us. And also, very important, it's so nice to be part of some of something, to be

part of a community and feel like you belong somewhere. So, sometimes not everybody plays nice, right? Because I'm talking about how it's cool to have a community, everybody works together. Sometimes people don't work together in the community, right? And that's okay, too, because that's what the community is about. When someone is not working very well with everybody or is not behaving well, as a community, we stand strong to make them change to make them leave. So, how things changed since people started organizing in Brazil? There is more government funding now. That was something that didn't exist. It's not like a fixed thing, it doesn't happen every year, but it happens, so better than nothing. We do have some very big companies. In Brazil, we already had a presence of

Ubisoft, of EA Games, and they always left. But now we have stronger presence of them, which is very good for I don't know all the devs that want a little bit of stability. Before we didn't have any stability and people started working in games and they have to leave after a while. Now we can actually have people that work for 10 years and keep working in it. Uh, people know each other from all over the country, which is amazing. We have even laws being discussed in the Congress about making game developing better and easier for everybody. We have communities that are organized around state interests of developers of that state and city interested and people from all around the world have people that discuss things that are important for genders in in the industry, which is amazing. We finally have people fighting together about things that they believe.

There are so many small studios now that are it's impossible to count them. We just know they exist because they are in the Discord. And hello to them. I can't name you, but you know who you are. And thanks for asking. I'm doing great now. I don't feel like a failure anymore. And that's the end of it. Please remember that we can change ourselves when we work alone, but if we are together, we can change our our whole reality. Thank you. That was amazing, Thaís. All right. So, I'm back and I'm back, which means I get to share a little bit of about my story as well. So, thrilled to share my journey as not just a creative professional, but also my industries in the my insights into the Brazilian game industry. I was born in Rio. You probably know Rio from the land of beaches or maybe the Christ Redeemer or

uh Sugarloaf, but I guess that's also why my passion has always been storytelling. To make sense of the world and life through stories is my drive. And that's what, after quite a long journey, but it led me to become an Emmy-nominated writer-director with over a decade of experience in digital entertainment. What I really like is that from games to VR, TV, film, comics, and even telenovelas, I was able to journey through different franchises that went all the way from Asimov's Foundation to Disney's Mickey Mouse, Netflix's Cobra Kai, DreamWorks Trolls, uh even Destruction All-Stars, and I got the chance to explore a bunch of different narrative formats. Each project I tackle and I work on is an opportunity to craft a modern-day fable with the intention of blending culture and sharing meaningful messages. But, it's been a long road, as I mentioned, to get here, and that's why I want to share how these adventures that I've faced have connected Brazil with the world, plus the lessons along the way. To talk about my journey, I have to contextualize the market and industry in

Brazil. While the market is massive and consumers play AAA games, the industry isn't on the same scale. Yes, it has grown, obviously, as you've seen, it's amazing, but it's a little bit different because this creates a gap for those who aspire to get into game making and make a career out of games. The same games that inspire the medium also can many times feel like a distant dream, especially in developing countries. And at the same time, which is interesting, you see here the logo for TV Globo. That is the equivalent to Brazil's Hollywood, let's put it this way. It's the second largest commercial TV network in the world, and it's synonymous with high-profile, large-scale productions that reach millions of viewers, not just in Brazil, but also with that content exported worldwide. What that's mean What that means is within Brazil, working for and with TV Globo is huge. It's a massive achievement, and I'm one that I'm very proud of to have worked and worked on different productions in there. But, imagine my surprise when I realized that being a screenwriter at TV Globo didn't mean much to people outside of the

country despite the network's numbers. It was only usually in conversations when I mentioned, "Oh, we worked on an Emmy nominated show." that people would start paying attention. So, this is just a simple example of how navigating from a developing country to the global stage is especially challenging. The gap between underrepresented talent and global recognition is real because if you can't acquire industry valued references nationally, achieving recognition becomes much harder requiring many years to build trust and develop that career. Of course, this struggle isn't unique to me or to Brazilians because it's shared by creatives from all over the world from different communities. However, this was what fueled my determination to amplify Latin American stories globally and ensuring that Brazilian voices are heard and achieved uh and acknowledged for their achievements. That's why my career has been a journey of self-realization filled with gratitude for the wild opportunities that allow me to connect with diverse fields. I started actually as a bachelor of laws uh because again, it's very hard to

figure out if you're going to get into game development at an early age. But, being in the academia, I got the chance to explore the intersection of digital media, art, culture, free speech, and intellectual property. This led me to work on unique projects and many of them international, but for example, Creative Commons, which was super relevant in the realm of copyright and getting people to share knowledge and access to content, but also researching game censorship across the world. We had a series of cases of games that were banned uh not just in Brazil, but across the world. This was also connected to the Supreme Court case in the US. And that was part of my field of my research understanding games as art and culture as well. And of course, uh in a very creative and uh different way that also led to putting together a performance, as you can see here, where cosplayers were criticizing absurd judicial decisions. So, that's something that we were very proud of put together in the sense of how can we communicate the value of games as a medium, how we can communicate the relevant of it in Brazil, but through different means and

tackling different issues that are of social relevance. So, motivated to bridge the gap between academia and the game development community, I also created Ludobardo, which is what you can see here in the GIF in the middle. This was a YouTube channel where I presented my academic insights as video essays and explore the rich narratives in games while discussing the cultural and legal aspects surrounding them. Eventually, I also founded the Rio de Janeiro chapter of the International Game Developers Association in specifically Rio, of course. And that was done with the intention of helping people connect. It's very much related to what Thais said, to what Bruno said, the idea that we needed people to get together, people needed to get to know each other. And it showed me, of course, that even if we had games made in Brazil since the 1980s, aspiring professionals had no clear way of becoming They had no path to becoming an intern or a junior at a AAA studio. That wasn't a possibility. So, of course, many people considered leaving the country to pursue an international career. Fortunately, and this is super cool cuz

Thais mentions Indie Game: The Movie as well. So, fortunately, Indie Game: The Movie, as said, was a huge impact. Specifically in Rio, I got the chance to translate the movie to Brazilian Portuguese, so we got it subtitled to Brazil, and then I hosted a Brazilian premiere. It was wonderful in the sense that we had the theater sold out, and everyone was inspired by, of course, this potential new path in career in the game development career. But, of course, it wasn't as simple. The reality in the movie was different than the Brazilian reality. And I felt that as well, because when I decided to transition from academia or from screenwriting, etc., to games, I noticed that there weren't any jobs for a writer or a narrative designer. So, of course, because I was already involved with the building of communities in the game dev scene, and already had the narrative experience from writing for TV and film. I was able to, as soon as I wrapped up my master's degree in design, out of necessity and passion, start my storytelling studio Fableware. I applied for and was selected by Huge Actif. This was the

business uh creative economy business incubator of Rio. And this marks our beginning as a service provider. Since there was no studio that had the budget for an in-house narrative professional, but it opened my eyes to the business model of contractors, consultants, and co-developers, which are crucial in co-development, uh sorry, in game development, and was also very important specifically in the Brazilian scenario, and still is. Not by chance, one of our narrative consultations evolved to a full co-development partnership. We joined forces with a local studio in Rio to develop the tactical RPG Sword Legacy Omen, and then, taking on the role of the creative director, I was able to pitch the game to Team 17, and it became, one we're very proud to say, the first Latin American game as part of their portfolio. As we won awards and nominations in both Brazil and abroad, we would always proudly and then announce the game as a Brazilian production, and that even led it to be feature being featured on national TV, which is the image you can see on the left. It wasn't an easy feat, but the point is, Fableware's journey showed me that the company wasn't just about crafting

our original projects, it was also about empowering other creators who faced the same struggle, either because we could put provide narrative development opportunities, or helping them with showcasing their talent. In 2018, which is the GIF you can see on the right, I curated and organized a three-day event in Rio, one of Rio's most prestigious museums, to celebrate Brazilian digital digital culture. Digi Festival was the name of the event, and it featured over 50 Brazilian games, films, and VR experiences for thousands of people to play, watch, and connect with. And the journey continued. Throughout the past decade, each year has brought new adventures and achievements, but my primary focus has been on expanding our business internationally and fostering collaborations to highlight Latin American and Brazilian projects and visions. In 2019, I relocated from Rio to Vancouver in Canada and to expand Favelas global reach. It was a tough decision because I didn't want to contribute to the exodus of talent, but then on the other hand, there was this unique opportunity to represent, support, and spotlight Brazilian voices from that international

setting. This includes, of course, working on diverse projects. As I mentioned before, Destruction AllStars, which was developed in the UK and has characters from all over the world, including Brazil and Argentina. But also collaborating with remote first studios such as Good Dog and Pixano. Narrative development and cultural authenticity are closely connected with one another and this is a great example of how we champion our voices and support other developers. We dive deep into cultural heritage and lore to ensure the narrative is consistent and representation and the representation is accurate. All the way from a management sim game about Brazilian jiu-jitsu about Sorry, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym in Rio to an RPG with ties of Mesoamerican inspired tales and themes. All of this points out how valuable, in fact, remote work has been for these cultural collaborations. It helps connect countries, build partnerships, and generate jobs for Latin American talent, be it from Brazil, Mexico, any other country from Latin America, or even Latinos in North America. Looking ahead, the Brazilian game

industry finds itself at a pivotal moment of both opportunity and challenge. Over the past decade, it has evolved significantly with the emergence of larger, successful studios along vibrant indie communities. Remote work has been a game-changer, enabling talented developers from Brazil to contribute to a wider way of projects from AAA to indies as employees or co-developers. I've worked on fostering not just games, as I mentioned, but building communities that facilitate this network of inclusivity. In Vancouver, we've organized panels featuring lo- featuring local developers and pitching competitions, all dedicated to diversity and career development. I collaborated with other BIPOC-focused events, including the Brazilian Consulate and the Brazil-Canada Chamber of Commerce, discussing the challenges immigrant entrepreneurs face. Through Fableware, we've helped Brazilian developers connect with the global industry and provided opportunities for them to work on high-profile international projects. However, of course, we can't ignore the impact of the industry's layoffs, which

have affected Brazil and beyond. We've seen closely that stability is not guaranteed, but that's why I also believe these collaborations between talent and developing countries and established industries are vital to generate jobs. The indie scene, with its capacity for experimentation and community support, provides a strong path for us to build a new standard of sustainable careers, redefine what success means, and shape the future of our medium, not just in Brazil, but across the world. And that's it for me. Thank you so much. Now, let's have Anna. Hi everyone. I am the creator of Pixel Ripped. It's a VR series, and I also love cos playing. That's why I'm dressed like this. I try my best to promote this game. I am a very immersive experience. We are in Brazil, and we focus in VR, AR. I have been working with XR, all the Rs, right?

You call AR, VR, and nowadays there's so many things, but just say XR is fine. I've been working with this for 10 years um now. Um actually more than 10 years. But how did I get here, right? I have a Everyone's sharing their story, so I'm going to share my story. I also took a long time to kind of find myself. I Like Thais said, I didn't saw games as a a way of work. I always loved playing games, but then I got a degree in psychology, then I ended up working at the Justice Council um making divorces and paperwork. It was weird. People like asking for the divorce and I was typing the documents listening to Mario tunes and it was just weird. And at some point I was thinking a way to escape from the bureaucracy, I started like making pies and bringing pies for my friends. This is the picture to prove it. I wish I had the pies. I actually thought I am bringing the pies for you guys to eat, but there was no oven in the hotel.

Uh so I started selling pies and in a moment I was like in in like a couple of months, 6 months, I ended up selling like 4,000 pies a month. It grew really quick. And at some point it was super weird like people asking for divorce paper, where is my divorce? Give me a chicken pie and then ended up I I ended People like, "Okay, we need a pie shop." All right, and I entered this entrepreneurs course where you learn how to where you're going to be your business and I was like, "Okay, I'm going to open the pie shop." And in this course I realized I was in the wrong business. And I I found myself and I was like, "Well, I mean I don't want to be making pies for 10, 15 years. I love playing games." This is me actually in the corner in the left playing Counter-Strike. I had a female Counter-Strike 1.6 professional team. This is a long time ago. And then I took the leap. I was like, "Okay, I'm going to change my life." Everyone thought I was crazy, my family. It was just like a big thing going on. I changed career, but I also changed country. I always wanted to live in Europe,

the country Europe. And I decided, "Okay, I'm going to start games and I'm going to learn this. I don't know nothing about anything, how to make this." And then I joined the SAE in London and it was 1 year of games programming course, C++ hardcore. And then I realized, "Okay, I'm more of a game designer." Then I managed to enter a master's degree at the NFTS. It's not NFT, it's the National of and Television School. But nowadays every time I see NFT, I know it's not NFT, it's NFTS. And this is me trying VR for the first time. Um this was a 2-years uh degree course and in the first year I had a opportunity to meet a student from the previous year, Albert, that showed me VR. And this is me using the Oculus DK1. So I fell in love and I was like, "Oh my god, I want to make I want to make a game with VR." And I was like really into into it. And then the final year of this course you could make anything. It was your final project. You could make a project the whole year. So I had this

dream and I was playing this game on the TV and this game was evolving from uh 16-bit 32 and it was like evolving from 2D graphics 3D graphics and the whole living room around me was changing and I woke up after that and I did, "Oh my god, I want to build a time machine make people go back in time and play video games the way it used to be how it was in the '80s and the '90s." So that's how uh the inspiration came and I knew I wanted to make a VR game. So that's how the creation of Pixel Ripped came, the game I'm still with this game 10 years now since I created this. This is 2014, the picture in the left. And then I put this game online. At the time there wasn't a store uh or a VR store like we have nowadays. Uh there was a called Oculus It was a uh Oculus Open I forgot the name now, but anyways there was a website uh where you can share uh it was from an Oculus. You could just share Everyone was just sharing their games. And uh they the one was selling and there was a lot of roller coasters. So I put my game there and I was really

lucky to put a student game and got some attention because of the roller coasters I ended up being in the first place and I got YouTubers, investors looking and I was like, "Oh my god, okay, this maybe I have to release this game." So I finished uh the university ended up in in this journey VR indie journey where I was uh I getting friends to help and a lot of Brazilians helped me at the time working in part-time jobs, and uh it was really hard to complete such a complex game. I ended up doing a Kickstarter that failed, traveled to move the company to US. Pixo Rev is actually now here in US, and then I enter up in Silicon Valley. I lived in San Mateo for like 3 years, got some investment Boost VC, and then 2016, my home money was gone. It was like really hard. Friends were helping, and and then uh 2017, I found Arbor, the company I'm with, and it was like really good to have this long journey find the perfect partner. Uh when I joined, Arbor was like eight people in the room. Uh there's actually some people from Arbor

here today, and yeah, actually in this picture, the lead artist of Pixo Rev 1995 here. And we now we're going to be in the two at the end of the year, 100 people working at Arbor. This is like the picture from last year's uh celebration. So, when I joined Arbor, we put one more year. I had already worked for 3 years on this first episode. It's a series. And we put one more year together working release Pixo Rev 1989, and then the work was good. We we we we keep working, and we start from scratch Pixo Rev 1995, release it during pandemic. And last year, we released Pixo Rev 1978 with Atari publishing. So, it is a Today, uh Arbor is actually the the largest XR company in South America. And we released many other projects apart from Pixo Rev series, which was the first game we released. We released Yuki, which is a bullet tearing VR, The Line, which ended up winning a Emmy Award during pandemic. And uh we have

today like around five projects going on in the house. Many projects I cannot say. Big projects coming. And uh yeah, it's everything going good. We are big in our industry, but unfortunately, we are more well known outside Brazil than inside Brazil. It's just crazy, but our all the games we sell, like this is like the numbers we got, like less than 1% is the public of our games from Brazil. Less than 1% buy our games from Brazil, and most is from 70% is America. So, America today is dominating the market, but it's also 31% of Korean fastest growing industries are also in Asia. So, Pacific Asia it's also growing really quick, but Brazil Brazil is not on this graph as one of the growing markets. No, it's more today and it's also not growing as fast as the other ones. I blame the price. This is actually real prices of the headsets in Brazil. We don't have officially released when you hear in America, you went to Best Buy, you can

try a headset, put in your head, and you can buy it on the go and try it. In Brazil, you have to go online and buy from people that are basically reselling. Like this is the Quest 3, the major headset today. In Brazil, it's 958. All of them you can see is like double the price. Basically, VR is for rich people in Brazil and really enthusiastic people that selling their souls to have VR. So, for XR industry to go mainstream, we in the world and everyone in the industry actually become like something common and daily basis for everyone, we need VR and XR industry to leave the boundaries of USA and China. So, yeah, that's my take. I'm going to pass the word to Sandro, my friend. Hello, good morning, everyone. I think it's hard to keep up with this story like Anna. I think Anna is the perfect

representation of the passion and talent that Brazil has in our country, and despite every difficult we we're going to find our way. So, I think congratulations, Anna. It's great to hear your story again. Um well, uh good morning. My name is Sandro Manfredini. I am the co-founder of Aquiris. Nowadays, I am a business development uh director at Epic Key. Epic Key acquired my studio last year, uh in May last year. And as of background, I also uh let's move to here. I also volunteer at Abra Games uh for 10 years, uh from 2011 to 2021. And uh I was president from 2018 to 2021. And um my whole uh background my whole career in games was basically developing my own studio in Brazil. Uh before that, I was working on advertising agencies and marketing, but also on the business side of it. So, today I'm going to story uh tell a story of Aquiris uh very briefly, uh as

another example of what was what what was going on in Brazil, um and how we get here. I will divide the story in some milestones to make it shorter, as we have just 5 minutes to go. Uh so, let's jump right in. Uh in 2007, we we started uh Aquiris. Actually, it was three of my co-founders that started the game uh the company before. I jumped in a little little bit after. And so, we didn't start the company dreaming about doing any specific kind of game, like a shooting game or racing game, and etc. Basically, our business mantra was uh stay in business first. Uh basically, doing a lot of work for hire in every everything that was necessary to stay in the business. Part of that is because uh all the founders, they we came from a very humble background, so uh economic stability was very important for us, not only for for the company. Moving forward, I think I can say that uh the first years of the company, the

most important power uh of us was the tech ability. We we were fortunate to start working with with the Unity uh since the very beginning of the Unity as as a engine and that gave us a lot of experience while Unity was growing and it's and it's a and it's licensing deal business across the world and they like it so much what we were doing in the first years that they invite us to do the tech demo for Unity 3.0. Which gave us a lot of visibility internationally. We we gave speech we we were able to call ourselves as one of the most especially in Unity and help us to make business and deals here in Europe with Cartoon Network, DreamWorks and some other publishers. 2014 was one of the most important milestones for us as we were able to secure one of a

venture capital round for the company that allowed us to to start developing our own IPs and also saved us from from a big layoff as in the same year later in the same year we got we got a business publishing contract cancelled and so we were able to save the the jobs and also start our own IP. And here it is. So Horizon Chase our first game was launched in August 2015. Horizon Chase is an arcade race pretty much inspired by Top Gear and Cruis'n USA kind of games. And the game was released in August with a huge support from Apple. Actually the game was the best of the week for one week worldwide and that gave us a lot of visibility and revenue. We were able to recoup our investment in the first couple of weeks. Moving forward and brick after brick actually the success of Horizon Chase brought us the opportunity to work with

Scopely on the mobile on the Looney Tunes World of Mayhem Um to mobile. Uh it was a very big and ambitious project. We never had a 50 people on the same team work together for one title only. Uh so that gave us a lot of new experiences and muscles to keep growing and also being recognized by by the industry. And again, one one thing calls the other. So Apple knew our work on on Horizon and Chase and some other titles and they invited us to do a new game that would be part of the Apple Arcade portfolio down the road. So we decided to do Wonderbox and Adventure Maker. That was our first game that when we migrate from Unity to to Unreal. And again, that will play play a important role in our future. Moving forward, also Horizon Chase 2 was a game that we did in partnership with Apple. Continue and following up on the real

development until Epic Key decide to invest on our studio in 2021. And last year of they they acquired the whole studio. So here is the part that I want to connect some of my takeaways with the Epic history. So international relationship is quite difficult for us in Brazil. We are far from the main markets like here, like the country Europe or Asia or or Canada, for example. So I want to to give a big shout out to two institutions here, AbraGames that have been mentioned before, but also to Apex, the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotions Agency, that together for more than 10 years they they created this program called Brazil Games that actually invite investors and publishers to go down to Brazil, to visit the studios, and to participate on the business rounds uh at Big Festival event.

Uh as an example of how important was that for Aquiris, I think the relationship that we built with Apple wasn't wouldn't be possible if we didn't have this kind of program because we do have meetings with Apple here at the GDC or Gamescom in Europe, etc. But having the chance that I have they coming down to Brazil, visit our studios, have a closer relationship was was key to the success of Horizon Chase and other projects in our history. No funding. I think we have mentioned that here as well. But basically we have immense difficulty to find private funding and also public funding. In the this recent study, only 7% of the studios mentioned that they had opportunity to have a VC round in Brazil. So basically again, how important is the Brazil Games program to help us to have access to funding.

Last but not least, world-class talents. I think you guys have seen with the stories that we shared here, but also I think in all disciplines we have the talent in Brazil and I think what you guys can expect is more great and great games coming from us. This is it from my part. Thank you. Amazing. Thank you so much, Sandro. All right. So as you can see, whoops, that's a went away. Now it's back. Uh I'm back and I'm back because that means we're very close to our end. Have you seen over the past decade the Brazilian game development community has made tremendous strides forward. We've witnessed the effectiveness of low-cost internationalization strategies, the transformative impact of community building initiatives, and the significant role of educational programs in fostering the seed growth. Additionally, of course, there's a rise

of outsourcing, co-development studios, Brazilian publishers that have further propelled the industry forward. Our speakers, as you saw, have shared inspiring stories of not just resilience, but innovation through different forms of success, showcasing the Brazilian game industry as a model of possibility for developers worldwide. And I think it's super important to emphasize what Sandro just said about also the fact that having this world-class talent access the international stage is a challenge. And it is a challenge that at the same time it's amazing for us to have this opportunity to have this conversation with all of you right here. But it also shows that it's a step forward, a step in the right direction. So, instead of it's dangerous to go alone, because of course no proper takeaway slide would be complete without sharing the lessons along the way. But, while referencing classic memes is fun, you did see that being part of a community is super important for us. The sentiment of being alone doesn't quite align with the collective spirits and

achievements that we've celebrated today. So, instead, don't go alone, because you're not. Take these nuggets of wisdom that we are sharing with us with with you from our experiences. So, coming from Bruno, make small games. From Thais, together we can change the world. From myself, don't hesitate to embrace your voice and experiment. From Anna, XR is here to stay, and it's not too late to dive in. And from Sandro, any industry relationship can be helpful in the future. So, as we look to the next decade, keep these lessons in mind. We learned them in Brazil, but we know that many other regions and communities face similar struggles and can benefit from these insights as well. Thank you for joining us on this reflective journey and inspiring experience. We look forward to connecting and building the future with you. Now, before we move on to questions though, just a reminder that again,

please fill out your evaluation forms once you get to the chance. It means a lot to us. And thank you so much. We're ready for questions if anyone has one. Just uh let us know if uh it's a question for the whole panel or for a specific person. Yes, I have a question for the whole panel. Uh as a game development student, I see lots of my friends talking about how difficult it is to enter the game industry there in Brazil and talking about leaving to other countries to start a career. And I saw you talking about this, too. Uh does the companies there in Brazil see this as a problem and are addressing this some in some ways or they don't care or I don't know. Okay, I'm just going to repeat it so we have it for the recording. So, the question is with the challenge of getting into the games industry from a student perspective, how do local

companies or national companies see that issue of the exodus of talent and what is being done to deal with that? Wonderful. Anyone wants to take it? Uh okay. Uh I was going to say that the first thing I would do um I would going to just start doing projects. I think having a a good portfolio where you have a bunch of stuff that actually done it that do a lot of game jams. Uh it's very important. When we hiring people, we want to see what they've done. It's important to have the course, of course, our degrees, but the most importantly, what you've done. When I finished the university, my best uh the best thing I had wasn't my degree, my master's degree in the game industry. It was the game I created in the demo, like make a demo, make it short and have like a good pitch. I think it if you have stuff you done and you created and it's going to be much much more important than anything to get a job. I think you have to show you done and have experience. So do game jams and yeah, start doing stuff.

Yeah, in addition to that, yes, go to game jams. It's a super important. You got to obviously develop this report, but I also think that taps into a little bit of what I said. Um even though for example, Fiber is based in Canada, we're always looking for opportunities to collaborate with Brazilian studios. So that means that we're looking into co-development possibilities and in many ways because again of remote work, you have the possibility of strengthening, bringing projects, talent that potentially is would be initially inaccessible in other areas that and now becomes a collaboration between two different companies across the globe, across continents. So that's also a way of facilitating that process, but of course it requires a lot of collaboration and I think that that's one of the ways in which we can still leverage the world-class talent in Brazil without necessarily having a full mass exodus of of people. Thank you and congratulations for the talk. It was amazing. Thank you so much.

much. Hello. Yes. Thank you so guys so much for the talk. I loved it. This question is for Arthur. Okay. So you mentioned the importance of remote work in helping Brazilians kind of connect with studios abroad and create jobs locally. As someone who's also from a developing country, I noticed that can be hard to build trust with foreign studios when people from your country haven't worked abroad that much. So how do Brazilians kind of create that trust in order to solve the chicken and egg problem and get the job in the first place? Excellent question and as I mentioned with when When comes specifically to my story, it's Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. So, just to repeat um what you're asking, let me know if I got it right. Uh what you're saying is also coming from a developing country, how do you build that trust or how do you build that uh possibility to tap into the international market uh when you're in a place where you don't have access to already those opportunities? Exactly. Yes. Okay, perfect. Yeah, as you saw, I mean, there's a challenge which is

what are the references from specifically the country you're in or the region you're in? As I mentioned, that's why I use TV Globe as an exa- an example. It's massive. It's huge. It has big numbers. But, lots of people don't know it, right? Um I think that's thankfully, though, unlike, for example, TV and film where there is this very strong regional element of even the live-action factor, with games and animation, there is a bigger possibility of exporting that content more easily. So, connected to what has been said about going to game jams and making games, I think the most important part is there are lots of places, not just game festivals that are in person, but also opportunities online for you to showcase your work. Um not just And then, of course, that extends all the way to the Discords and servers and communities, of course. And this has been This is actually good timing because this has been enhanced uh by the necessity of remote work and remote connection that took place because of

the pandemic, because of COVID, right? So, it's not that, for example, Fever, we're I have been working remotely since 2015. But, at the same time, that factor allowed us to start working more easily with people across the globe. Even based, for example, in Canada, uh there are lots of connections with Asia where I've worked with the country of Europe. So, it's um there's this connection of how can we tap into world um connections, but from where we are? The thing is exposure is a necessity. And that's why I highly encourage you, depending on the factor, to go to these, even if they're remote events, right? Connect with people. Um there are several events that are even uh more active now here at GDC that weren't before the pandemic. So, the fact that it is remote, the there are events that take place in different time zones for people to be able to make make that those connections. Sure, thank you so much. You're welcome. Hi, this is for everyone. Great talk. Um

I was wondering and I I thought the statistics were really interesting. So, I was wondering if you see any trends as for types of games or genres that are really booming in Brazil. I'm thinking uh stylized or realism. Um anything that you see is growing really rapidly in the in the next year or two. And uh for context, I'm thinking from a small indie studio uh like what might be a great match for uh limited marketing budget to to to go after Brazil. Okay. So, repeating the question, just uh what are the um most relevant uh genres and trends that we identify in the Brazilian market? And also from an indie studio that is not based in Brazil, how can you also make that connection with the the Brazilian market, right? The answer is Free Fire. Free Fire is Okay. everywhere. I know every everywhere else is Fortnite and other games, but mobile has a much bigger penetration in Brazil. Anything you can do mobile is going to

work much better there. And right now uh I can see like uh children that are 7 years old playing Free Fire as and being very well ranked. Okay. Perfect. Shama, thank you. No problem. Welcome. Uh this question is for everybody, but maybe mostly Thais. Um you had talked about how prior to Indie Game and coming out, the community was really uh sort of spread apart and hadn't come together. Was there anything specific you all did to like find each other or like kind of create the community and bring bring folks in? Nothing really specific. Oh, sorry. yeah, yeah. So, just to confirm, repeating the question, what were the best ways to get the community to connect, right? As in like before uh everyone knowing each other, right? Yeah, 100%. To find each other. Uh no, not as specifically, but at the time Facebook was getting big in Brazil, so most people started connecting in Facebook. Uh I don't know if you know this, I mentioned a a name, but Echo Gamer. It

was a community in Facebook that was very toxic, but everybody was there. So, people started knowing each other and actually it it was bad, but it was good because you could see how people behaved even when they weren't behaving very well. Right now, I'm not sure which way is the best, but one way I did when I started it uh I move I moved a lot for jobs and for money and whatever, but uh for the past 6 years or so, I'm Curitiba and when I uh I started living there, I started looking for indie hangouts there, and no one had organized it one yet. So, I decided to started organizing one. And uh we started meeting monthly every first first Saturday of the month in a specific place, and uh in the beginning only two or three people appeared, but we kept on, and after a year like

10 people always came, and sometimes five new people appeared, sometimes no one appeared, but that's part of it. Uh that is my strategy. I don't know if it's going to work with you. I like bars. I like drinking, and that helps, but maybe I get together in a in a board game uh place or a coffee just to get to know each other. That makes a lot of difference. I like bars, too, so that works. Thank you. Uh just just to give an addition I think another strategy is thinking uh game jams like not not only as a game producing events but as events for making people work together in making relationships. Then I think it there's another way to make this kind of connection. Without alcohol? Are you sure? Without alcohol? But there's game jams with alcohol and pizza, so Alcohol and bars. You just get all together. You can stop at every break in the bar is where the

best ideas come for the game jams. And uh another addition to that if you have access to any this was mentioned before like either national associations or regional associations, uh look for those. That's why at the time I started the IGDA chapter because it was a name that people could identify and recognize, but it doesn't even have to be an existing association. You can start as Thais mentioned start a meet up. Be consistent. That's super important because then people will know that this is the spot for other indie devs or other developers to meet. Cool. Thank you. You're welcome. All right. We are unfortunately out of time. Uh I think Uh we're unfortunately out of time. Uh so we're going to wrap it up, but speaking of wrapping it up we are also going to if anyone's interested we can talk more at the wrap-up room uh here after the the session. And again just a friendly reminder uh please fill out your evaluation sessions and a big thank you to Bruno, Thais, Anna, Sandro. We're very proud to be Brazilians and we're very proud to

have shared our stories with you. Thank you and have a great GDC. Thank you.