The Voxel Agents first gained notoriety with the arrival of Train Conductor for the iPhone / iPod Touch, but who are they exactly? Well, I'm glad you asked! Multimedia Victoria have placed up a great company feature on The Voxel Agents (an opportunity provided to one other well known Melbourne game-dev success, Firemint), detailing the backgrounds of the founders of the Melbourne start up, and in the process revealing some pretty interesting history on how the studio came to be.
The three founders, Simon Joslin, Tom Killen and Matthew Clark, met at Brisbane's Queensland University of Technology where they all studied game development together. After graduating and spending two years in the industry at Brisbane game studios Pandemic and Half Brick (and also winning two consecutive 48 Hour Gaming competitions in Brisbane), they decided to go out on their own as an independent game developer.
The most interesting part of the story is how these Brisbane developers ended up in Melbourne. From the Multimedia feature....
"The choice to move to Melbourne was one of the easiest decisions of my life.
"The local community, the culture of innovation, and the exceptional support provided by Multimedia Victoria and Film Victoria for the local industry really makes this the location for making games,” says Simon Joslin.
All three founders moved from Brisbane, Queensland, in early 2009 in order to start the company. When asked why they didn't choose to base their business in Brisbane, Simon said Brisbane is an amazing city with a lot to offer and there are some extremely talented developers based there.
“We simply found that the Victorian Government's support for game developers and the ICT industry in general, makes it the clear leader for games in Australia and the easiest city to start a new venture like ours," Simon said.
The Voxel Agents attribute much of their success to the culture of innovation in the local games community.
The Multimedia feature also details the success of Train Conductor as well as their plans for 2010, so be sure to head on over there to read the rest!
Also, The Voxel Agents will be speaking at the next IGDA Melbourne Meeting, titled "The Voxel Agents, One year into Indie". For more details, please click here!