Well, as I've predicted, it has happened, and it's for the better of everyone looking for work in the digital content field.

http://www.theedgedaily.com/cms/content.js...696c20-af7b1aa0


Net Value: Codemasters creates a stir
By Toh Mei Ling

The digital content development industry in Malaysia is in upheaval as the tussle for talent has been getting rougher in recent months. However, this situation is not widely known outside the industry. Still, for years, the unresolved problem of insufficient skilled talent has been looming over digital content developers, be they animation studios, design houses or gaming companies. Although an estimated 1,500 multimedia graduates enter the industry each year, there is still a huge disparity between supply and demand.
This is largely why Codemasters Studio Sdn Bhd, a UK-based online games publisher and developer, was harshly criticised by smaller local players for talent poaching following its recent entry into the domestic market. The impact has been severe, with some companies closing shop and others losing up to 40% of their head count.
The company, which is a joint venture between Codemasters Software Co Ltd and leading local media group Vision New Media Sdn Bhd - has been offering local computer modellers and programmers remuneration packages that are too attractive to turn down. The incentives include a pay rise of up to 50%, nine-to-five work schedule and five-day week, which are unheard of in the fledgling industry.
But Vision New Media Sdn Bhd's CEO Low Huoi Seong brushes aside such criticism. "We will be developing games for Playstation 3, a next-generation game console that isn't on the market yet, at Codemasters Studio. These games are very complex as the technology allows real-time rendering as opposed to that of Playstation 2. Because of this, we need to hire the best and pay them better salaries. I don't see this as spoiling the market," he says.
According to him, most animation and gaming studios in Malaysia offer very low wages, not because they want to but because they cannot afford to. These studios are based on the "sweatshop" model, where they live from one project to another. They often scale up or down according to the projects they receive and because of the inconsistent income flow, the studios need to keep their overheads low.
"Because 99% of the industry is in this field [producing outsourced work], they cannot afford to pay employees well because they need to cover for downtimes. At Codemasters, we will be providing content exclusively to our parent company. Our pipeline is 100% full, with no downtimes. We are not overpaying our staff because they will have work lined up throughout the year," Low explains.
The digital content industry is known to be a demanding one. Content developers need to work way beyond their contracted working hours, weekends and public holidays included. Which is why industry observers are doubtful Codemasters will be able to live up to its promise of a nine-hour, five-day week schedule and still deliver the goods on time. When asked this question, Low laughs: "We are trying to be enlightened employers here and we get criticised for it!"
Citing the court case filed by an employee against US-based computer and video games company Electronic Arts for lack of quality of life, Low says it was a conscious decision by Codemasters to encourage its staff to live a balanced lifestyle. "If you're really after quality, you shouldn't make employees work 24/7. It really helps that our parent company and main stakeholder is based in the UK, where they don't work weekends. We hope to create the same culture in the Malaysian firm."

Working with MDV
Bringing Codemasters into Malaysia was not easy, says Low. Working with Malaysia Debt Ventures Bhd (MDV), the joint venture finally came through after two years of negotiations.
As gaming companies are very possessive of their intellectual property (IP), the contract to be an exclusive supplier is an attractive proposition, Low points out. It eliminates the need to source for jobs, which, in turn, allows the company to focus on building the industry and training skilled people.
"Codemasters holds the larger share of the JV because it is providing the technology that our company will be using. [Vision New Media] has taken the smaller stake because this is an important deal for the country if it wants to grow the local industry. We opened on June 5 with 35 employees, comprising mainly computer modellers because our focus for now is high-end modelling. Currently, we have 40 employees, of whom only two [the general manager and technical director] are foreign," Low says.
Setting up a 40-seat modelling studio would have undoubtedly cost an arm and a leg. "Let's just say MDV's funding is substantial," Low says when asked the question, declining to reveal the amount. MDV too would not disclose the figure.

Graduates with no industry relevance
The lack of skilled talent and appropriate environment has been hampering the development of the Malaysian digital content industry for years.
On this, Low says: "The problem with the local industry is that there are just not enough good people. We have between 200 and 300 graduates per year from each university or college offering creative courses. The problem is, the fresh graduates don't have industry relevance. University curriculum gives them basic knowledge skills but these are not relevant to what the industry wants."
Debunking the myth of insufficient graduates, Low says the problem is lack of trained and experienced human talent. "If there is no real industry to work in, there is no way to provide any form of proper training for employees, right?" he asks.
Low has his reasons for criticising the academia-industry linkage in Malaysia. Vision New Media's 3D animation studio, Persistence of Vision (POV), was started as a joint venture with Multimedia University (MMU). Housed in the MMU campus, POV's operations were built by the university. In return, POV contributed 120 hours per year to training MMU's students. According to a source familiar with the arrangement, MMU made sure that POV kept its end of the bargain initially, but after a while, it stopped asking for industry involvement and the programme just fizzled out. POV moved out last December.
This comes as a surprise because MMU's president Prof Datuk Ghauth Jasmon has constantly stressed academia-industry linkages.
Anuar Berahim, manager of Unitele Multimedia Sdn Bhd, the wholly owned subsidiary and commercial arm of MMU responsible for coordinating joint ventures between the university and industry, says: "Right now, there is no linkage between POV and MMU. I understand that POV hires MMU students as employees. It is true that at the beginning, there was coordination but after the first few years, problems started to crop up. We definitely see the benefits that come from industry collaboration but there have been problems in terms of business set-up and operations. We are now focused on project-basis collaboration and short-term partnerships rather than the long-term business deal we had with POV."

Attracting world-class players first
Low says a lot of international jobs have been going to India, while China, Vietnam and Thailand are slowly gaining market share. Interestingly, job flow to Singapore has been slowing because of lack of human capital and higher costs. Despite this, Malaysians are still heading south.
"Singapore has been taking our top talent by offering more attractive packages. With the exchange rate, these people are earning double what they could earn here. We have lost a good number of our best character animators to Lucas Studios. Aside from that, even if our local talents have a great idea, they won't be able to create intellectual property [IP] just yet because they lack the skills and experience. That is why we need to attract world-class industry players to learn from. This way, we can concentrate first on creating a pool of world-class talent and after that point create IP," says Low.
He elaborates: "Everyone seems to think that with the creation of IP, we will be able to grow a pool of skilled human talent, which will lead to a robust industry. It should actually be the other way round, where we build an industry to grow a world-class talent pool. From there, creation of IP can happen. We must learn to crawl before we can walk."
Clearly, Malaysia has a long way to go in digital content development. If the government is serious about making this industry a key one under the Ninth Malaysia Plan, it is vital that these problems are nipped in the bud.

God, I just had to LOL at that... Remember "Real Time Weapon Switching"?

PS3 bashing aside, I am quite doubtful of their "9-5, 5 days a week" claim... I mean, even powerhouses like EA and Nintendo don't adhere to this rule. And WTF is up with this:


AFAIK, every game developing house out there runs on this system (Actually, every software company uses it)

So, my guess is, whoever they're hiring will just be menial employees that will most probably perform mundane work for the actual projects that will be in their Europe offices (Hence the reason its not project based). Stuff like turning concept art into full 3D models, creating texture artwork, etc.

Still too early to tell I guess, but good on you for predicting this.

This post has been edited by H@H@: Sep 12 2006, 10:26 PM

There is another interesting thread I read here. Check this out.


http://www.igda.org/Forums/showthread.php?threadid=23852

Those who critisize codemaster are idiots. I have a bunch friends working there. And they are working just fine. They have to stay back sometimes until very late when rushing project but that is very normal in all working field.

And the funny thing is some people are stupid enough to say that codemasters are poaching away talents with more high pay. They can afford it wat, so what? who ask the other company to be so poor and stupid. Just count yourself unlucky lar.
Its human nature that you will automatically jump to a company which offers you higher pay and more benifit. You cannot outdo them than just shut up.

What to do , those are Ah Pek companies mah, too used to abusing/exploiting their employees. Their attitude are like 2nd hand car dealers. hehehe.

Anyway, this is not the end of the problems, more MNCs could be coming, and more poaching is going to happen. Lets see the MNCs compete with local game developers for outsourced projects too, THEN you will see some sparks flying.

Have you heard this before: "Call me monkey, just gimmie the money" ?

Well, that might not make much sense, so let me put it into context here. Money is very important. More important than job titles and job roles. Heck, money is even more important that your interests! If you're one of the lucky few that actually get to do what you love, and get paid well for it, then congrats Joe Fabulous, but to the rest of us, a supposed 50% pay hike isn't something to scoff at.

Yup, not to mention the fact that cost of living in Malaysia completely does NOT tally with wage levels, due to inflated car prices as well, and especially property prices for KL.

To hell with passion if you're starving. Money first.

And your point is?

All this is fine and dandy if you want to earn a living, but it sure as hell ain't worth squat in terms of game development in Malaysia.

Did I ever dispute the fact that you earn more for less with this company? I just stated that you're also "less" involved in the game development process.

I mean, yeah, lots of other MNCs will come in to Malaysia if this does well, but do you think we'll actually start seeing full development houses being formed here as a result? Thing is, if it does take off they'll probably form more companies here with the same purpose, which is to perform the "labour" work during game development.

If this isn't the case, please tell me at least ONE game that is being developed and conceptualized totally in-house in Malaysia's very own Codemasters, which isn't a port. Otherwise, this will be just a typical "Yay more job for local designers and IT grads" and not the "And finally, Malaysia will have (another) a game to its name"

Just look at Dell... Malaysia manufactures almost 100% of all their laptops, but are any of them "created" in Malaysia? That's the point I'm getting at.

hidup gamebrains

Good Luck. I heard almost their entire veteran staff got wiped out from mass resignations/poaching by other companies and more to come. With them being the local game developer with the craziest hours of 12 hours a day from 7:30 am, most likely will be the biggest casualty from MNC poaching.

This post has been edited by bman: Sep 15 2006, 02:21 AM

m'sia is currently promoting our country as a hub for shared services, so we are doing our best to attract all these MNC'/large co's to setup shop in m'sia. for each big co that comes down, they will provide on avg between 100-200 jobs for our creative graduates. some might be even more, if we're lucky.

if we want our industries to grow, we cannot just hope for our local co's only. how many of them can hire 150ppl at one go? co's liek codemasters offer exposure which otherwise you will not be able to experience. how many can put on their resume, worked on ps3 game media dev.

competition is always good. survival of the fittest. if we want m'sia to be on the map, we have to have world class ppl. otherwise jaguh kampung, which nowdays, the kampung has become global.

my 2 cents la

Do we really need a "made in M'sia" game? No.

Why not?

Well, please explain to all those ppl who are actually taking Game Development degrees in MMU please...

I'm not one of those "Malaysia Boleh" honchos who think that Malaysia can do everything, but game development IS one of those things that ANYONE can do.

For the same reason we don't need a Made in Malaysia car.

it is only bad for local company, not the people.

with them coming in, malaysian have more opportunities to expose themself to do some better work.

Game development is so much different than making a car. You don't have to dump in bilions to do so. All you have to have is determination and passion. So, back to the drawing board, we don't need a malaysian car's reason is not the same.

Give me better answers.

Holy shit... Is that why you hate local game development companies so much? Guilty by association? WTF?

Comparing Made in Malaysia cars and games is about the same as comparing apples and air.

First of all, cars can be a considered a necessity... Games aren't. If a crappy local game exists, just don't buy it, its not like there's nothing else for you... Its not like these local games are being forced down your throats which have horrible QA and are filled with bugs. Have you even PLAYED Fung Wan Online?

But, do tell, what is this "reason" that local games and cars share? Seriously man, don't make this about poilitics. Please spread your anti-MoM sentiments elsewhere.

You guys are funny. The simple reason is we don't need them, doesn't mean we must not make games. Even if all the local game/creative content companies die, life will still go on and nobody will give a shit.


We don't need Malaysian made games, because we have so many other choices of games to play with. rm 5 dvd/games are here to stay and consumers are spoilt for choices.

We don't need Malaysian made cars, because we also have other choices of cars if not for the tax. If Proton and perodua dies, so be it, we still have imported cars to choose from.


The simple reason is, we're spoilt for choices. Why need to turn this so political?

This post has been edited by bman: Sep 16 2006, 07:16 PM

So that Second Sight game I played a few months ago, which I thought was so cool, was created by...poached talent? Wow, that bums me out. I don't know what else to say except that reporter is right when he claims that not a lot of outsiders know what's happening within the game making biz.

What do game coders do anyway? Sit in a dark cubicle all day in front of a monitor staring at lines of code? And waiting for industry poachers to show up to offer them a blue pill or red pill?