Taiwanese publisher Neon Doctrine talks community, collaboration, and conflict

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Iain Garner never expected to be working in the video games industry.

Born in rural North England – "a tiny village between two tiny towns" – Garner spent a lot of time in front of his TV, playing Sonic the Hedgehog on a black and white screen (he says he didn't even know Sonic was blue until he was much older. After completing a degree in English literature and history, he took a year out to teach English in China… well, Garner ended up remaining in the far east for a decade.

It wasn't until he took a job at Tech in Asia that he discovered that he could turn his lifelong love of gaming into a fruitful career. Yet it was clear, even then, that a great chasm "divided the East and West", and Chinese games were underrepresented on the global stage.

Now, ten years on, Garner continues to work on addressing that underrepresentation with Neon Doctrine, a global publisher he established nine years ago with fellow co-founder and CCO, Vlad Tsypljak.

Situated in self-ruled Taiwan – a breakaway province China is fighting to pull back under Beijing's control – Neon Doctrine has to work harder than most to maintain effective links with all partners, particularly those in and around mainland China. And whilst neither Garner nor Tsypljak believes the issue impacts the types of platforms they publish on, securing devkits can be difficult at times, and "lacklustre support for games in the south-east Asia and Taiwan regions" persist.

Interestingly, the partners don't think their location detrimentally affects their national and international partnerships, either. The company is designed in such a way that the location issues are mitigated as much as