Interview

Speaker Spotlight: Bossa Studios' Henrique Olifiers on accessible game dev tools and industry trends

Pocket Gamer Connects London 2019 will take place on January 21st to 22nd

Speaker Spotlight: Bossa Studios' Henrique Olifiers on accessible game dev tools and industry trends

Pocket Gamer Connects London 2019 will take place on January 21st to 22nd. To give you a taste of what to expect, we'll regularly be publishing interviews with the speakers at the show.

For more details on PGC London and to book a ticket, head to the website here.

In today's Speaker Spotlight we're talking to Bossa Studios founder and gamer-in-chief Henrique Olifiers.

With a games career spanning more than 30 years, Olifiers has been at the forefront of many gaming revolutions, from the demo scene of the late 80s, through to mobile, MMOs, VR, social games and creatively-led indie titles. His previous experiences include head of gaming at GloboTV in Brazil, where he developed the most popular online trading card game in LatAm during the early 00s.

Olifiers held the position of head of game development at Jagex, overseeing the overhaul of its main title Runescape HD and saw it achieve its peak subscribers number. He left Jagex to join Playfish as studio director in the UK, where his team successfully produced the BAFTA-nominated FIFA Superstars.

As the co-founder and gamer-In-chief at Bossa Studios, Olifiers is responsible for the company strategy, management and game design.

The studio's biggest titles are the unexpected Surgeon Simulator- a YouTube runaway success with more than four million copies sold; the BAFTA-winning Monstermind; I Am Bread, the multi-million selling journey of a humble piece of Bread to become toast; and Worlds Adrift, the first of a new generation of massive online simulations that aims to redefine multiplayer gaming.

PocketGamer.biz: Can you tell us a bit about the company?

Henrique Olifiers: Bossa is an independent development studio and publisher, with a strong emphasis on creativity and team freedom.

There's no better way to learn than doing it yourself. Learn from the trenches, share a lot with likeminded people.
Henrique Olifiers

What does your role entail?

Running the business, helping to nurture its culture and devising strategies for our future.

Why did you want to work in the games industry?

A huge love for games, since childhood, starting with a Pong console, moving to an Atari 2600 and finally my first game running on a ZX Spectrum.

What advice would you give to anyone looking to get into it?

Get a good tool (Unity, Game Maker, Unreal...) and start making a game, or a mod for an existing title.

There's no better way to learn than doing it yourself. Learn from the trenches, share a lot with likeminded people.

Keep your first game small, and prepare for it not being a success - it takes a while and a few attempts!

What are your thoughts on the industry in the last 12 months?

As exciting as it has ever been. Flooding with creativity, new game design paradigms, ever-increasing quality.

What major trends do you predict in the next 12 months?

Cross-play, with PC and console games having versions or aspects of their titles on mobile.

How has the games industry changed since you first started?

In every single way one can thing of - except that it's driven by innovation, risk-taking and a desire to make players fall in love with what we do.

The availability of easy to use tools such as Unity makes it the best of times to start.

Which part of the Connects event are you most looking forward to and why?

Meeting the people making the games I'll be playing in a bit.

PocketGamer.biz's two-week UK Special is shining a spotlight on the country's vibrant games industry ahead of Pocket Gamer Connects London on January 21st to 22nd 2019 - the largest B2B mobile games event in Europe.