Rocketwerkz looks for 60 staff and waterfront office for Auckland games studio

Wednesday, 11 September 2019

Rocketwerkz boss Dean Hall says its Auckland studio will provide well-paid work for developers who might prefer to 'live it up' in the cbd.

Dunedin games firm Rocketwerkz plans to hire about 60 staff in Auckland by the end of the year to build a 'survival genre' computer game.

Chief executive Dean Hall said the game would have a budget of more than $20 million.

Chinese technology giant Tencent has a minority stake in the firm and bought perhaps the country's best-known games-maker, Grinding Gear Games, for a sum known to exceed $100m last year.

Hall said that while most details of its new game were under wraps at the moment, it would be a 'first-person' game for PCs and consoles and possibly other platforms.

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'Very much mutli-platform would be the best way to describe it.'

He expected the Rocketwerkz would be able to reveal more towards the end of this year.

'Part of this is to experiment with doing quite a lot of the development through social media.

'The project is underway and we want to have it out in a few years. By the end of the year we'll plan to be quite a lot more public about where the game is at and what it is going to be.'

Rocketwerkz boss Dean Hall originally rose to prominence with zombie survival game DayZ, but the studio is now looking at 'Triple-A' projects.

Rocketwerkz currently employs 50 staff in Dunedin and Hall said its median salary was about $80,000.

It had so made about five hires in Auckland and would be looking for waterfront premises in the cbd, he said.

Some people wanted to 'live it up' in the Auckland cbd and others preferred the 'family-friendly' environment of Dunedin where 'dollars went a bit further', so having two offices would provide staff with more choices, he said.

The dual offices would also make it easier to keep projects separate so resources didn't get cannibalised, he said.

Hall's roots lay in 'indy' games such as zombie-apocalypse game DayZ, but Rocketwerkz was pivoting towards 'triple-A' projects – a term that denotes larger projects with higher development and marketing budgets that are more akin to 'blockbuster' films.'

'We have been shifting this year towards that, both in Dunedin and in Auckland.'

The company had not found hiring difficult so far, he said.

'It is quite an attractive project to work on, with attractive salaries.

'We have been recruiting staff out of Weta and other video-game studios both here and overseas.'

The Game Developers Association released a report last month that forecast the 'interactive media and games sector' could be a $1 billion export industry by 2024, after generating sales worth $143m last year.

The computer games industry is the sort of 'low emission' industry the Government wants to support, says Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford.

It called for a government rule-change that would allow businesses in the sector to access incentives currently provided to the film industry, saying that would create 'hundreds of hi-tech and creative industry jobs'.

'40 years ago our film industry partnered with the Government and we now have a multi-billion dollar screen industry. 20 years ago our music industry did the same,' chairman Cassandra Gray said.

'Our interactive and games industry has reached the stage where it has the capability, skills and international opportunity to similarly contribute significant jobs, exports and social benefits.'

Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford said the sector was the type of industry the Government wanted to support.

'It is low emission, export-driven and scalable.'

A spokesman for Twyford said the Government had no current plans to let video-game makers access screen-industry incentives, but that was an option that could be considered as part of an 'industry transformation plan' for the creative industries that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment planned to work on next year.

Hall said Rocketwerkz was not receiving any government help.

'We would like things to move super-fast but the wheels of government move quite slowly, certainly compared to us.'

Rent and salaries would probably be about a third cheaper in Los Angeles, but there were benefits in developing in New Zealand with regard to 'how we approach things that we want to bring to the games', he said.