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A future in gaming

A future in gaming

22-year-old Southbank resident Jackson McCrohan is already forging a successful career in the gaming industry.

Along with his two friends and colleagues Raymond Awad and Richard Baldachhino, the trio last year launched their business Fancy Sword Games.

In less than a year, Fancy Sword Games has produced two highly rated app games and is in the process of making more.

Having studied together at the Academy of Interactive Entertainment (AIE) at the World Trade Centre tower at North Wharf, Jackson said the trio had developed a range of skills with a shared vision for developing games.

“I did the programming course and then Richard and Raymond did an arts course but specialised in different things,” he said.

“Raymond specialised in animation whereas Richard specialised in concept art and game art with texturing and modeling.”

“All three of us always wanted to make apps, which is really good because the team we were with before always wanted to make PC games and they have a much bigger scope and are generally year-long projects as a minimum.”

Having grown up in the Latrobe Valley and Pakenham, Jackson moved to Southbank with his family in 2014.

With Jackson undertaking his course at the World Trade Centre and his father working at Price Waterhouse Coopers at Freshwater Place, he described Southbank as a very convenient place to live.

Since graduating, Jackson said he and his colleagues had quickly set about establishing a business – having all undertaken an incubator course in management and marketing as part of their studies.  

To date, Fancy Sword Games has produced two games Get Flipped and Tile Descent, and is now in the process of creating its third game Get Down.

Jackson said the trio had been encouraged by the positive response to its games.

“The first one Get Flipped we released that about five months ago so that one actually went better than we expected,” he said.

“We only expected around 50 downloads and I think it ended up with 200.”

Jackson described both Get Flipped and Tile Descent as puzzle-based games, which focused on testing reflexes, memory and patience.

Having grown up as a gaming enthusiast and witnessing the transformation in technology, he said the possibilities in gaming development today were endless.

“Tile Descent has got heaps of stuff that would have just been stupidly hard to do back in the day and it’s changed so much especially with graphics,” he said.

After recently exhibiting at the PAX Australia gaming and pop culture exhibition at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre (MCEC), Jackson said the trio hoped to continue networking and growing the business.

“When starting a new game from scratch, every little thing you do you can see so it’s really rewarding,” he said.

“We’re hoping to produce a new game every one to two months, so our goal for this time next year is to have about 10 games out.”

Get Flipped and Tile Descent are both available to download on the iOS App Store and Google Play Store.

For more information visit fancyswordgames.com

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