For our 9th developer interview, please welcome Desmond Wong from The Gentlebros! the indie studio behind the award-winning series, Cat Quest. They’ve made an incredible global impact from our sunny shores, and it is my pleasure to have had the chance to interview them! Before you read on, check out Cat Quest III!
1. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer this interview! Could we get a quick introduction to you and The Gentlebros?
Hello! I’m Desmond Wong, the CEO and co-founder of The Gentlebros! We’re best known for the Cat Quest series of games, and have sold millions of copies around the world.
We’ve released Cat Quest III to hugely positive reviews and it’s our fastest selling game to date as well!
2. What is The Gentlebros’ founding story?
All the initial co-founders of the company met in Koei Tecmo (Dynasty Warriors, Ninja Gaiden etc). We decided to team up to make a small game for fun. Little did we know that the game would end up catching the attention of a big publisher who would provide us with funding to bring it to market. We used the opportunity to leave Koei Tecmo and Gentlebros was born.
3. What do you think are The Gentlebros’ greatest strengths or defining features?
I think our company’s greatest strength is the worlds we create. We always aim to create fun and interesting worlds with great visuals for players to explore. With the Cat Quest games, we also created a niche for family friendly and accessible games that have allowed the series to reach a wide audience!
4. What is a typical week or workday like in the studio? (We saw a boast about flexible work hours in the career page!)
Out of a five-day week, we only go to the office twice! Every other day, we work from home in an environment that is more comfortable for us. Although we have official working hours, we’re not strict on that as long as work gets done.
We’re super easy going and believe in a balanced lifestyle!
5. With a now expanded team of Gentlebros, has workflow and communication changed from the days of being a 3-4 person team?
Surprisingly, the tools we use to communicate have not changed much, but we do find ourselves benefitting from more physical meetups where we can really discuss matters more deeply with each other. We also now have our own smaller team chat groups that allow us to communicate with others in the same department.
6. Do you think the accolades earned by the Cat Quest franchise shifted the trajectory of The Gentlebros Studio?
I think our accolades were the result of Cat Quest’s success rather than the cause of it. Usually, winning an award will not move the needle much in terms of sales, but awards definitely help lend more credence to an already successful product.
7. What misconceptions do you think there are about being an indie game development studio?
I think the biggest misconception about game development is how difficult even the simplest interaction can be.
For example, consider an NPC speaking a single line of dialog. Accomplishing this first requires an artist to draw the NPC and an animator to animate the NPC as it speaks. This is then passed on to a writer who writes the dialog for that NPC. The writer must ensure that the dialog is consistent with the lore of the game and does not contradict any other dialog in the game. Following this, that dialog text must now be sent to a localization team that will translate that text into other European and Asian languages. After all this, this single interaction is now sent to a QA tester who needs to test the dialog in all languages and in every circumstance to find bugs. If a bug is found, the interaction is sent back to the development team before it is returned to the QA tester to verify the fix.
All this for just one single line of dialog spoken by an NPC. A game is much more than just one line of dialog obviously, so you can imagine how much more is needed to ensure a full game is ready for launch.
8. Are there unique challenges that come with being a Singapore-based indie game studio?
I think the biggest challenge is the high cost of living in Singapore. Because of this, the cost of creating games in Singapore is also higher than other places in SEA. This means that our games have to sell more copies to be sustainable as a company.
However, on the flip side, Singapore is also a really convenient and great place to start a business which makes up for that!
9. What are The Gentlebros currently working on?
Although we can’t say what we’re working on, we can say it is something completely different from Cat Quest!
10 Where can we subscribe to the progress of Cat Quest and future releases? And how can our viewers support you?
You can follow us on social media like X, Instagram, Facebook, Youtube or TikTok! Just search @TheGentlebros to find us! Thank you!
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Thank you once again to Desmond for the thoughtful interview, I can’t wait to experience Cat Quest III for myself! If you are a developer who is working on a game and would like to discuss a potential interview, feel free to drop me an email at himetokki@gmail.com! It is my pleasure to feature more games through this series. Thank you dear viewers for enjoying these installments to the blog so far!