Mario Andretti is a familiar name to racing car ethusiasts and to video gamers. My only exposure to car racing has been at the Australian Grand Prix about a decade ago when my client Southcorp Holdings kindly invited me to sit in their box at the Adelaide Grand Prix. Frankly, I was a little upset with a couple of crashing cars (luckily no major injuries) and have maintained only a mild interest in auto racing since. However, when I read that Andretti is a big name in video gaming and more importantly is now available in a cell phone version; my interest revived.
More interesting from this blog’s point of view was that the entire game for the Verizon platform was developed overseas. According to this article creative content outsourcing is becoming big business. Apparently GWE (Global Wireless Entertainment) started by asking their vendor, Paradox Studios to research Mario Andretti and took about six months to get the game developed. Development involved an alpha stage where more detailed specifications were drawn and then a beta stage when a playable racing car game became available. Both launch time and cost for the new game in a new platform (mobile) was drastically reduced by getting the creative folks in Mumbai (Bombay) to work on the project.
Creative Content outsourcing has its own unique challenges, including the need to keep up good and regular communications with the developers and creative folks overseas, good natured experimentation and the ability to move with a team you really have not met. Also the question of good intellectual property management is important. Nevertheless creative content outsourcing does seem to be the emerging as a frontier in global outsourcing …