A Visit to Tantalus Interactive

Studio Tour from Cav - Friday, 27 June 2008 @ 1:09am

I'll admit now, that I am probably the least knowledgeable on the subject of video game creation out of the whole Australian Gamer team. We all know me and my bald noggin are here for my knowledge of useless facts about wrestling, ability to feed the minions information about AG at our eGames booth in November and my sex appeal (Sorry Oracle, you've been succeeded!!). With this truth told, I knew I had to do some homework before I ventured of to Melbourne to visit Tantalus Studios with my Australian Gamer counterpart, AJ. While browsing the Tantalus website, I wondered to myself whether or not I had actually played anything they had developed:

'Never did play South Park Rally ....hmmm .... Mary Kate and Ashley? I think I saw that at Matt's place, well, umm, hang on what's this? Pony Friends? Damn, that sounds familiar! It's only 9:30pm, I'll just wake the kids up. "Oi! Wake up! Where is your DS?" Ahh, here it is, Pony Friends. "Dad's just going to play this for a while, okay? Hey, stop laughing at me and go back to sleep!"'

Being the only Tantalus title I had, which is pretty embarrassing on my behalf, seeing that Tantalus have been together for nearly 15 years, I sat down and had a crack at Pony Friends. Now I know that 95% of Australian Gamer readers won't find that Pony Friends is their cup of tea, but for those of you who have a little sister or niece, buy them this game and sneak in a go or two for yourself. I'll bet you ten bucks that you will find it to be better than Nintendogs. A little more internet searching revealed that Pony Friends has actually sold nearly a million copies, which is not bad for a game which is not a sequel or based on an existing product or franchise. Not only that, but Tantalus was ranked in the Top 100 developers in the world by UK magazine Develop, the only Australian company to do so, quite a feat considering the amount of Studios there are here in our great land.

I met AJ just near The Tea House; a lovely old heritage listed building which Tantalus has the pleasure of occupying. A quick elevator ride and I knew was at a Developer Studio, an arcade cabinet stood guard at the door. The office was nothing like I imagined. It was a bright and open space, with copies of Tantalus's successes displayed in the entry. AJ and were lead to a conference room, to wait the arrival of Mr Tom Crago, CEO of Tantalus Interactive. Tom arrived and after the regular formalities of introductions, business card swapping and a quick discussion on where to obtain the best coffee in Melbourne, we got down to business. Having spent the better part of the previous night playing Pony Friends, this was a subject I was keen on knowing a little more about:



Tom Crago: Well I want to start by putting on the record that Cav loves Pony Friends


Tom: When we set out to make the game, Nintendogs was obviously the biggest reference that we looked at and we wanted to make it as visually impressive as Nintendogs, but we also wanted to extend that experience. We wanted to give kids the opportunity to do stuff with their pony that they couldn't do with their puppy. That manifests itself in the trail riding components of the game, which we think is one of the strongest elements, definitely one that the kids have responded to and loved, along with the customisation and caring as well. There has just been something about Pony Friends that has resonated and without a huge amount of marketing or promotion. Its approach one million units sold, which is a phenomenal success. It's the biggest selling, single SKU title ever developed in Australia. No one skew of any title, to my knowledge, has sold as many as Pony Friends. Obviously this data can be difficult to come by, but we're calling it as the biggest success.


Tom: Exactly, if someone wants to correct us, go ahead! So yeah, Pony Friends has been a big success.


Tom then took us on a tour of the studio and gave us an opportunity to meet a few of the staff. The facilities were quite impressive, spanning over three levels of the building and not the tightly knit cubicle farm I had expected. AJ made mention that this would be one of the very few places in Victoria where you can play a Nintendo DS at your desk and not get I into trouble by the boss (although I often get away with a few sessions at my work while running reports).



Everyone seemed to be feverously tapping away a DS, but it was for a good reason: Tantalus Interactive is currently working on a new Spyro title for the Nintendo DS. You can find out more about this good looking game with my World Exclusive Preview.