It has been a fruitful 15 years since Halfbrick began. From humble beginnings working out of our CEO Shainiel Deo's basement to the state-of-the-art studio we now inhabit, it has been an exhilarating ride full of twists and turns. Since the release of Fruit Ninja, the company has seen many major changes which are now the subject of a documentary - Play To Win.
These are the director's thoughts on this documentary:
Play to Win is about a man whose passion and single-mindedness earned him extraordinary wealth and success. But success always comes at a price, and this a story of the loss of innocence, and of the pain of growing up. Shainiel Deo is the CEO of Halfbrick Studios, and his life parallels the contemporary history of games culture and the games industry: he was born at the height of video arcades when games were beginning to come into their own as a craze, and consoles were finding their ways into homes around the world. Now games have become a ubiquitous, global cultural past-time – and a multi-billion dollar business experiencing meteoric growth. Within this, the games industry embodies one of the core dilemmas of our time: how can we preserve the spark and the joy of creativity in a commercially-driven environment? As creative industries become increasingly ‘demand-driven’ and decisions are dictated by data, where does it leave the artists and dreamers? The documentary will have a limited theatrical release in Brisbane and Melbourne followed by a Q&A.
