High time for our second ‘Meet the Members’ blogpost! Today we talk to Amir Erfani from Phantom Coast who just joined DGA. Alright, Amir, take it away 🙂
Are you a member, and would you also like to be featured? Great! Send an email to marlies@dutchgamesassociation.nl and we’ll send you our questions.
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Please tell us a little bit about yourself, your company and your position in the company
I’m Amir Erfani, and I work at Phantom Coast as game producer and general manager. Our studio is based in Amsterdam and is founded by the Dutch media personality Jordi van den Bussche (aka “Kwebbelkop”) more than five years ago. I was hired as the first employee in June 2018, on a mission to build a team and launch a game within the first year. Luckily we could form the core development team with two skilful individuals: Steve Swink and Leon Berghorst-Dam. Later on Jasper de Bruin joined us during production of our current project. Please meet all the skilled members of Phantom Coast here, very proud of the team we managed to build!
We would love to see (or hear) some of your work! Please show us some examples of your recent projects.
We started small, by working on a YouTube-friendly project called Havocado as a warm-up effort to build the team and practice our workflow and refine our production pipeline. Havocado was released on Steam Early Access 8 months after we began, and we continued posting updates for the game for a while.
With all the experience gained in the first year, we decided to start a new project and shoot for the stars, by focusing on creating a game we were passionate about. We began Helskate in January 2020 and expanded our team to 6 people, introducing art production to the process. After a few months of prototyping and implementing the core mechanics of skating, we managed to partner up with Kowloon Nights. With them as our funding partner, we continued working on the game with an expanded team. At one point, 22 people were working on the game; we had added animators, character artists, programmers, and more. We finally announced our project at Day of the Devs: Summer Game Fest Edition in June 2023, after more than 3 years of working on it in silence. At the moment, we are preparing for an Early Access release on Steam sometime in early 2024. Very excited to ship this passion project and see where it goes from there!
How long have you been a DGA member and what is your main reason for joining? What can DGA do to help your company?
We just joined! We’ve been aware of DGA’s activities for some time now, but felt it was time to step into the spotlight after announcing our game. The main reason for joining DGA is to connect with the community, benefit from the flow of knowledge and experience, and, last but not least contribute in any way we can.
What ambitions/plans do you have for your company?
To continue making the games we love to make! Our main goal is to sustainably run our business by turning our passion into memorable playable experiences for everyone.
Anything else you would like to share with us?
Thank you for this opportunity and for all the great events and activities you are organizing. It feels great to be a part of this community.
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Thank you, Amir!
Are you a member, and would you also like to be featured? Great! Send an email to marlies@dutchgamesassociation.nl and we’ll send you our questions.