Growing the Adelaide Games Scene
Hello everyone!
We think it is incredible when companies help to grow and support the growth, development and evolution of their industry. Here at Mini Mammoth Games we are trying to do exactly that despite still being a SME. We are actively supporting new devs, the growth and outreach of games and how they can be used as more than just entertainment every day we operate.
Before Mini Mammoth Games, our founders were all studying together and being offered occasional placements through our academy. While helpful, they were rarely doing explicit game development work and often the projects were in semi-adjacent fields instead. Although ultimately a bit disappointing, these placements did show us how variable our skills can be but just weren’t what many of us were wanting; a placement where we could build a game, from start to finish. Conception to distribution.
Unfortunately there weren’t any game specific placements available in the state, and from the founding of Mini Mammoth Games we set out to change that. Starting off with our old haunt, the Academy of Interactive Entertainment. It was a slow start, but eventually we had a revolving door of placement teams coming in and out and creating hyper casual mobile games in a pipeline that took them from the design and concept to marketing and release onto the Google Play Store.
With this in place we wanted to offer that chance to the full contingent of educational institutes in the state, but first we needed a small increase in our office size to accommodate the increasing demand. Flinders University and Adelaide University were eager to jump onto the opportunity to be able to find placements for their games students. With having work experience directly related to the industry it also gives students a leg up after graduating as they are able to ask staff here to be a reference for their resumes. We can then provide accurate feedback as to how they work in a studio environment and help to push them into the industry.
Aside from our work to help the learning and integration of new developers into this industry, one of our goals as a company is to grow the local industry. Our mission is to create memorable experiences that promote a positive impact in the world, and we are achieving that through our placement program, and within all aspects of Mini Mammoth Games. With our client and internal projects we aim to scale internally, so we hire on staff from our program. With the extra experience, they can then at minimum get a casual job working in the game industry. Best case scenario they get a permanent full or part-time job here with us. This is another area where we can further help our previous placements, providing them experience and portfolio work they can use to advance their career even if we aren’t positioned to support them long term at the time.
To extrapolate a little further, within our outreach and client work we are continuously talking to industries and companies whose involvement and use of games as an interactive medium has been minimal at best. Our aim with a majority of networking and outreach is to help those outside of the games industry see how an interactive experience can help them connect with their audiences in a more personal, educational and entertaining way. Something small and personal can often make a massive difference in the way they talk with their own customers, and in the big picture we can help a lot of people learn new, interesting things about the world.
This is only a quick look into what we do and try to achieve here at Mini Mammoth Games, but we hope that this not only inspires other developers to help upskill and support new developers, but also other companies. We can’t do everything ourselves and growing the industry here in Adelaide will benefit everyone in the long run.
So if you, or anyone you know is interested in participating in our program, or running your own, please reach out to contact@minimammothgames.com. We will be sure to get back to you as soon as we can!
