Since I am brazilian and I know that my country is not as appealing as other countries when it comes to gaming, I am curious to read your viewpoints on the subject.
What do you think about Brazil's position in Game Industry?

I think it sucks. Although, I know a guy from Brazil who is going to be attending DigiPen Freshman year with me

The best places for game development are places like US West Coast, Boston, Singapore, Seoul. Places like this are where most game developing companies and action reside. I'm not sure about specific Japanese cities, but I do know that there are some very large companies in Japan.

Wow, watch the stereotyping.

Anyway, I know someone who claims that Brazil should be getting real big in the field within 10 years since big companies like Blizzard and Pixar are installing their offices here.
I think the main problem is the image the country has. Try googling "brazilian" and you'll see a bunch of semi-naked women pictures or the so-called "brazilian wax". What a joke.
The worst part is, more related to the subject, that we got games like Favela Defense. The contry somehow denigrates itself.

I know that Brazil has a pretty large gaming community, not as large as the US, Japan, Korea or China, but it's up there with some of the European nations like the UK, Germany and Spain. Since Brazil has such a large population, there are bound to be a lot of players. Some companies, like Blizzard for example, have put up Customer Support offices in Brazil since those offices could in essence give support to all of South America.

As far as creating games, I have no clue.

That isn't stereotyping. Something more along the lines of "Brazilians suck at making video games" would be a stereotype, however, saying that Brazil itself is not that flourishing of a place to develop games isn't.

Nothing in there about geography or economics.

Citation: https://www.digipen.edu/uploads/media/digipen_podclass_issue_37.mp3

Here is the game development page for Brazil on wikipedia, might be interesting to you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_gaming_in_Brazil

Cecil, you said "Brazil sucks" along with "but I know a brazilian ...". Through common sense, feels like you wanted to say that no brazilian has competency but the guy you said about. But anyway, let's move along.

I'm not really looking forward encyclopedia information about stuff going on in my own country even less about other countries. I just want to hear people's opinions. Yours took less than a line.

I wish more Brazilians would join, making it more likely for multiplayer game companies to invest in servers in Brazil, so I don't have to deal with them speaking Portuguese on US East servers, or with their lag. Other than that, I think it has nowhere to go but up. It's clearly done well in other countries; Brazil is enormous, and has plenty of people to develop stuff. There's a lot of money to be made, but the biggest obstacle to overcome other than the semi-naked women is the Rain Forest. Seriously, a third of Brazil is home to some of the craziest shit alive (big cats, etc...) and that unfortunately prevails in the minds of people. Australia is the same way, but they have the benefit of speaking a very similar language to the US, and are remarkably similar to the British.

If you're talking about game creation, I think it's unlikely for a game made in Brazil to make it out of the country without being attached to a different, global company. It's going to have to be really good.

Cecil just doesn't think Brazil is very good in the gaming industry (it's not, you said so yourself) and that he knows someone who is going to school. I think you misunderstood him, or you take offense to non-offensive things like non-offensive stereotypes which aren't even remotely true.

You're misinterpreting what Cecil said. You asked what people think of Brazil and the video game industry (as in Brazil's role in the industry, one would assume), and Cecil said "it sucks." "It" referring to Brazil's current role in the gaming industry. No one is insulting your country here.

I'm not quite sure, though, about this topic being in Serious Discussion. We'll see where the conversation goes, I suppose.

I have not heard of Brazil being involved in video game development before. The biggest publishers of English-language games are based in the US/Canada; Japan and France. There are other English-language developers in the UK (e.g. Rockstar, which has its HQ in the US now, but is mainly British); Germany and Sweden (Paradox Interactive; JoWood etc.), and Russia (1C; Buka etc.) but the really big publishers tend to have their bases in the US due to the massive potential audience.

I don't know if Brazil will be able to catch up - I certainly see Brazil producing games in Portuguese but the English market is tough to get into.

I hear you rockz. I find the language/lag problem really classic... it makes the game less-playable for local players and for foreigners and, worst of all, they sometimes can't read english.
Well, about the rainforest and big cats, it's funny to see how things that I've never seen personally are mentioned. I'm not criticizing your comment, it's actually one of the kinds of things that I wanted to hear from people with eyes outside to see how our image is like.

Captain, so, theorically, if a game company from any nationality makes a game completely in english, it's more likely to become successful?
This reminds me of the film Ice Age. Its director is a brazilian, but this didn't have so much percussion for some reason.

Also, I am not offended by Cencil. I see I misunderstood since the beginning, sorry about that; no reason to keep talking about this

I think Brazil has the POTENTIAL to become a great source of games, but it currently isn't. South american countries certainly have the skill-base. An example is Argentina's Plumiferos, which is a feature-length CG animated movie, produced outside hollywood, pixar, dreamworks and the other big names. South america and brazil don't need EA or blizzard or activision to open a studio down there (well, up from my location ) but as long as nobody takes the initiative in making a high-quality, popular game there, nothing will happen.

Cool optimism
Do you know Zeno Clash? It's the first high-production game from Chile. It uses the Source engine and is really well done IMO. Now a lot of gamers are creating expectations for Zeno Clash 2. Look how one single product made all the difference for one country - before then, I didn't know Chile could make games at all. But, again, the game language is in english.
I guess Brazil's situation is similar. I thought the country's image was denigrated in this field, but after reading your comments it seems to me that it just has no image. Am I guessing wrong?

No, you are correct. I haven't heard of any games made specifically in brazil, and very few in south america as a whole.

It definitely helps if the games are in english.

I don't expect it to do much in the English world. There are enough producers in more developed regions to provide for any demand there. However, as Brazil's demand for Portuguese-language games grows, I can see some domestic game industry emerging. Not very soon, however, because Brazil doesn't have a great education system - I'm sure that's a large obstacle.

Do people honestly believe that gamers go out and just say "Oh man, it's Brazilian, better not buy it."
No. No one does that.
In South American countries, computer technology and computer science programs are not as developed as they are here; therefore, the coding is generally of lesser quality. In addition, there is a large cultural difference. Western culture has different ideas about gaming than South American culture does.

Hello. I couldn't understand the link between cutting-edge hardware and programming. Can you explain better?

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jun 9 2010, 1:20 am by adeon.

Yeah, the rain forest comment WAS a stereotype. However the fact remains that things like survivorman, animal planet, and national geographic like to pimp out the crazy stuff, and we get no information on the technology coming from Brazil. Maybe if companies went to Brazil for tech support rather than India, but that would likewise create a negative image in the minds of United Statesians.

My image of Brazil: Rainforest, poor education, generally low level of technology, and the... err... "Scantily clad dancers". I got the last one from South Park, though. <_<

And I know of Embraer, one of the largest aircraft-producers, after the Canadian Bombardier, Russian UAC, European Airbus and American Boeing.

It's really strange if you think about it. Brazil is one of the last countries (if not the last) in education ranking, but we have some of the best universities, and most of them are owned by the government - this means they are free, you just have to pass a test (they call it "vestibular").
Recently I got surprised when hearing about a company in my state that sells rocket fuel to NASA. This kind of information has bad rebound even inside here.
IMO, Brazil has bad reputation for all the wrong reasons.

Eh? What best universities? Never heard of any.