Hassan Mehdiasl is the CEO and Founder of Sourena Game Studio. After establishing Sourena in 2008, their first focus was producing PC games but that has shifted to also providing a way for international studios to publish games in the Iranian market. In their Casual Connect Asia 2016 session they explained how exactly can one enter the above mentioned space.
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Hassan’s first position in the industry was as a C++ programmer. They later worked in product management and business development before moving on to founding their own company, saying the experience helped them get to this point. “I have to admit that I was lucky enough to have that opportunity to climb the ladder of success,” said Hassan.
One of the main reasons that Hassan took this route is to entertain people. They think creating the best user experience is “beautiful” and they love seeing the smiles on people’s faces. “I don’t think I could ever work in a role where I couldn’t create a product that would entertain millions of people,” said Hassan.
Loving what you do is key, according to Hassan. They said that believing in what you are working on shines through in the finished game. Hassan adds that game production is not a good choice of career if you want to work on a regular schedule and go home at a regular hour.
“Every project has its ups and downs and projects in the games industry are not an exception. If you work hard, and you think your game is the best thing ever and you still can’t get on any distribution platform, don’t take that as a failure and a sign that you should stop making video games. Very few people hit a home run with their first game, you have to gain enough experience and do your research through the way to improve your work day by day. You would not be successful unless you have a great idea, reasonable and accessible goal, a hard-working production team and strong experience,” said Hassan. “Of course it’s also important to focus on distribution platforms you can get it on, and since every society has its own culture and interests, your game can be a blast on one, but a failure on another.”
From Disassembling Machines to PROGRAMMING
When Hassan was young, they weren’t thinking too much about their future career, but they did love learning about the oceans and outer space. They also had a childhood desire to go anywhere, something they note that with their current job, they “can virtually travel everywhere”.
While Hassan was a gamer since they were very little, they note that they mostly tinkered around with electronics, from radios and space heaters to power tools. All of these disassembled machines made a mess and one day Hassan’s mother cleaned them all up, making them so disappointed, Hassan did nothing but played games in their room for a week. Eventually, they wondered how PC games were made, and that lead Hassan to where they are now.
“When my dreams for electronics fell apart and I set a new dream about making games, I did a lot of research about it that led me to the conclusion: I’m not the one for the artistic part but I have a thing for coding, so I go for learning C++ as my favorite programming language,” said Hassan.
Simulating the World
Hassan describes their creative process as relaxing with team members. They say that helps them take the time to have new ideas appear. After that, the team at Sourena will meet and choose out of the best concepts and hash out a prototype.
Inspiration for projects generally comes from other media, like books and movies, that Hassan would like to put their own spin on. As for the dream game Hassan would like to make, they say they would make something like the ultimate virtual reality simulation.
“I would make a game about letting the player be an ideal version of themself. The game would simulate real life with all political, economic and scientific aspects,” says Hassan. “The player would manage everything to get valuable skills, more money and better positions to be successful and to make the country proud, and also all countrymen would collaborate to compete with other countries in the world, though I’m not sure if there are any servers to handle 7 billion players of the world at the same time.”
The Challenges of Finding the Fun
Hassan loves game development, seeing a game improve every day you work on it. They say its like raising a child plus an incomparable feeling of when it brings people joy. While often exhausting to make, it’s worth it, in spite of all the last-minute challenges.
“One of my greatest and most stressful challenges of game development is facing a problem just before release. I admit there’s also a challenge in finding the fun in your game and figuring out what people will like about it, because I think everyone could make a game, but few producers could make one which is attractive enough,” noted Hassan. “The most rewarding part is positive feedback from community once you publish the game.”
Whenever a game is being produced and the team is stuck in a rut, Hassan has a simple solution. “I would give the producing team a needed break, to free themselves from day-to-day operations so they could concentrate wholeheartedly on the direction of product development; swimming in the pool (highly recommended), having fun, playing multiplayer games, even if only for a few minutes, is just like magic to apply in creativity,” says Hassan.
Tough But Flexible
So far the proudest moment in Hassan’s career is getting the “game of the year“ title awarded to their team by two various festivals. While it was wonderful to see the team so happy, not every moment in game development is so joyous, and there’s also the necessity of letting people go.
“Human resources are the most important ones every manager has,” says Hassan. “It’s incredibly difficult to fire less talented people in such a competitive industry, and this creates much more pressure on project. But we want to work with people with ambition and drive towards be the best for company’s sake, so I have to be tough sometimes.”
In order to avoid having to let people go, Hassan seeks out employees that are energetic and self-motivated, because happy employees tend to lead to a more productive team. As for themselves, Hassan thinks most of their employees consider them both punctual and very tough. “Actually I am a tough manager most of the time but I’m trying to be flexible and my office is open to my colleagues to come and tell me if there is any difficulty with me,” said Hassan. “I’m open to criticism in order to achieve self-assessment.”
VR Multiplayer
Like many in the gaming industry, Hassan sees VR as being a very important trend for the future. “Also, in my opinion, it’d be great if tablets and laptops would be combined in one product so we could concentrate on making games for portable PCs with higher graphic quality than ever before.”
“We [as a studio] are looking forward to things such as the use of virtual reality devices in multiplayer gaming and we’re hoping to be successful in this area,” Hassan adds.
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