Few days ago on #StartupLokal mailing list, Firman Nurimansyah (Lapar.com and GarudaGames CEO) introduced an online game develops by Garuda Games named SteamOps. The soft launching of this game will be held around 2-6 November 2011 at Jakarta Convention Center on the Jakarta Game Expo and Indocomtech.
SteamOps is the winner of INAICTA 2011 competition on video game category. Firman explained to DailySocial via email that “at INAICTA we only got a chance to present this product in front of the board of juries. All the nominations for video games category are “big fish” like Agate, Toge Production, Majapahit Online, and so on. May be it is because we are the only one who brought up 3d animation game so that we can win this competition”.
Next, this game will compete at Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards 2011 (APICTA) in Pattaya, Thailand. This event will be held on 8-10 November 2011. “We are offered to be APICTA nomination while we were doing exhibition at INAICTA and we accept it” said Firman.
From the information we got from SteamOps’ FB Page, it seems that this game developing process were started from 2010. Firman exclaimed that this game is being made last year and still in trial, there were some bugs exist as well. Besides, the features were not as complete as now. At that time, the status is still closed-to-alpha and there were only certain people being this game tester. It was only last August, this game is finally finished.
From #Startuplokal mailing list, Firman explained that this game took steampunk as the theme. The background comes from the imagination of revolution industry in which all technology was supported by steam engine. After the invention of steaming engine by James Watt in 1769, all the industries such as manufacture, telecommunication, and armament were improving.
This game tells a story of two different strongholds: West and East. West stronghold consists of nobles who like to buy and collect new armaments while East stronghold consist of marginal people who do experiments to invent something to compete with West stronghold. The West stronghold is called Noble Steampunk while East stronghold is called Street Steampunk.
How DailySocial readers can try to play this game? Firman explained that you can download this game from Steamops.com on download now button on the right side. You may also find it on CD at GarudaGames Jl. Moh Ramdhan No. 105 Bandung.
In monetizing, Firman explained that the strategy is by “play for money” so when players play the game, they will get money by promoting this game to their friends, family, or anyone to be downlines. In brief, it adopts multi level marketing (MLM) system. Whenever the downline buy item mall we rent out, in a form of armor or anything, the upline will get 20-30% from the money paid by players (downline).
From the demo video above, I can say that this local game can be equalized with foreign online game with the same genre. The 3D effect is quite impressing for me. The future plan of SteamOps is to make it possible to be played on mobile device, then on iOS platform that will be launched by next year.