Behold Studios' second life
"No one knew that it was possible to make games in Brazil."
Saulo Camarotti set up Behold Studios, one of the longest running Brazilian developers, over 15 years ago. The studio is primarily known for 2012 RPG Knights of Pen & Paper, and 2017 sequel Galaxy of Pen and Paper. But when it first began, starting a games business in Brazil was not common.
"We were trying to get to international events, like GDC or Gamescom, trying to pitch our games – and it was kind of a big surprise for most of the publishers," Camarotti recalls. "They were not so comfortable with new studios. The gaming industry [in Brazil] was quite new at the time. So we got a little bit of prejudice, and it was hard for them to invest in the country.
"Even 15 years later, I do think it's still, for some, a wild thing to invest in a game production in Latin America. But publishers in the past five [or] ten years are getting used to the scene, getting used to working with Brazilians, so that's a good thing."
Brazil doesn't have a AAA industry yet, Camarotti notes, though it does have "big studios." They're just not necessarily producing AAA content – if they are, it's often work-for-hire with Western studios – but rather focusing on free-to-play mobile.
"We don't have the workforce that's coming out of AAA and going to other companies and improving the quality of game productions," he says. "So, for example, I live in Toronto, Canada. And I see that the students that are coming out of universities are going to work for a Ubisoft or a AAA, so they get experience, and sometimes they open their own studios. And here in Brazil, we are opening the studios out of necessity – there is no one to hire us.
"That was my case. 15 years ago, I was graduating from computer science, I wanted to work with games and in my hometown Brasilia – a huge city [of] three million people – there was no one to hire me, no company, no business. So I had to open my own."
A first iteration of the studio as a work-for-hire developer was
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