Starting a game company - Eximion story pt.1

1. Introduction

Back in 2004 one of my best friends came up to me and asked me to do some images for a game design document he was writing.

I turned Doki down saying "nah dude you know what? I'm done with this whole gaming business. I'm tired of these shooters, kill some monsters and die stuff".

Little did I know that a few months later I was well on my way of becoming the company's Art Director and co-founder, together with Doki Tops, Rob van Gulik and Mark Schroders.






2. Before the plunge

Prior to contacting me for the conceptual designs we had both been working shortly on an american game project called "Prince of Thunder". Doki and I, with both quite some experience in building content for shooters we're on board the project and asked to do levels and textures. Doki at the time was some kind of level guru mastermind and our Tribal CTF project amazed everybody on the level design planet.

Cool note: Level designer "Sock" who we worked with during the Tribal CTF period has ended up working on Prey and other top titles. Quite a few people we were involved with ended up in some pretty cool places in the industry.

Shortly after I was sort of tasked by the project leader to lead the artists on the team. The team was a huge group of scattered souls, some experienced some not and I was suddenly asked to make sense of it all. Doki and me kindly said "no thanks" and we left the project because we didn't want to rip up an excisting project so dramatically which we were intending to.

I remember Doki saying to me "listen if these guys can get funding with little real content going, a leaderless group of people, why on earth shouldn't we be able to?"

A good point if you ask me and since then Doki Tops has more than backed up his statement because he not only got funding to officially start Eximion, but has also proven to be an able leader.


3. The initial plan

Now we enter the murky pub meetings, messy student houses, bedroom conversations period. Sit tight!

Doki knew some 'guys' that were working on a game engine. Some of them he knew already, others he didn't. Our concern was that you don't just build a game engine and make it "work". Doki was not immediately convinced and had seen so many small amateur teams whip up engines only to have their projects die a silent death in a years time. It takes some real longterm commitment to take something that works to a something that sells and attracts people.






I guess with the idea of having me on his team (after turning him down at first I was soon attracted to the whole gaming vibe again) and a positive chat with the programming guys including Mark and Rob, Doki saw some sound possibilities.

With the words "Ok I wanna do this but only if we setup a company and make this into our living. I'm not going to waste time on some hobby project".

And with that basically we went on and never stopped until this very day. The initial plan was (seeing our background experience) to go out and make a really cool 3D first person shooter, with graphics to rival Doom3 and Unreal somethousand. It just seemed the natural thing to do. Again little did I know what I would be making a small year lateron...


4. Nice memories

This is really the early beginnings and it's amazing how 'murky' the memory about it has become. Some things truly stand out though and these are:

- The short but passionate involvement of Roel Verbroekken (www.zylom.com) and his "rock 'n roll bedroom" room in the house where Eximion is still located. Complete with weeks old pizza boxes, guitars and game consoles.

- Eddy (again from Zylom) who has ever been enthusiastic about us and visited occasionally during that starting period. He advised us to "put stuff down on paper" quickly before any money was involved. Priceless tip at that time and we stuck to it.

- Everybody still had a different job at that time so we worked during the evenings. One thing Doki arranged was fixed working hours, logged projects and a professional mindset. This was quite exceptional to keep more that 15 volunteers working at strict hours for free over a period that would become allmost two years. The spirit we created during this period has influenced the company's mindset and soul greatly and we are proud of that.



5. End of part 1.


In the next part I will tell more about the first year of development and the big changes that were ahead.