A Hopeful Romantic

Ken Wong, founder and creative director of the Melbourne-based game maker Mountains, bucked a few trends when creating Florence. For this interactive graphic novel about a blossoming romance, he not only decided to make the protagonist a woman, but a woman of Asian heritage who dates a South Asian man.

“It didn’t even really cross my mind as a major decision; it was just part of fleshing out the characters,” Wong says. “At the same time, it opened up a lot of interesting possibilities, because their identities could play as part of the story.”

Here, the 36-year-old creator shares what it was like to come into his own after working on a groundbreaking game, and why the company’s location was so important to its success.

What problem were you trying to solve with Florence?
Before I made Florence I was working at the London-based studio Ustwo, which made a game called Monument Valley. It was successful for some of the same reasons. It was a beautiful narrative and puzzle-based game at a time when people thought mobile games were disposable and something you played on the toilet.

But what was the next step after making a hit game? For me it was starting a studio: taking everything I learned, coming back to Australia, and establishing a really good culture and team practices. Of course, we were operating in the shadows of Monument Valley. People had really emotional experiences with it; they played it with their children. For a lot of players, it was the first game they ever finished. That was a lot of pressure.

What were your biggest challenges, and how did you overcome them?
Usually when you start an independent studio, you do it with your friends or people you’ve worked with. In my naivete, I washed up in Melbourne and opened a studio on my own, and I found myself with a really diverse team of talent that hadn’t worked together before. We had to learn how to communicate, how each person thinks and creates. It’s not to say I wouldn’t do it again that way, because I’m really proud of the team and what we each brought to the table.

When you started out, how, when, and where did you work on the app?
From the very early days, we had our office in a coworking space called the Arcade, which is all gaming companies. There are about 30 of us under one roof. We are a really small team, but we have all these sister companies that we can go to for advice or to borrow equipment. And we just work 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. each day—we really discourage overtiming.

What turned out to be easier than you expected?
Everything was pretty hard.

At what point did you realize that you could pull this all off?
When we could play the game from start to finish for the first time. It was really rough at that point: There was no music and we didn’t have all the levels, and the ending was a little different. But it felt to me like, “OK, we’re going to get there. It’s not good enough yet, but what we have to do is make this better. We still have time and we still have the budget.” We’d been working on it for seven months at that point.

What advice would you give to your younger self?
Don’t take things so seriously, and spend time and energy on enjoying life outside of work.

What’s next for you?
We’re working on our next game—but it’s a bit too early to reveal anything!

Florence

A story about love and life

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