In the crowded gaming industry, where studios compete to please publishers that fund and release their games, the Kyiv-based Frogwares studio has remained remarkably independent and authentic. Much of that authenticity comes from its Ukrainian core.
The studio is best known for its Sherlock Holmes games, which are among the most popular detective videogames.
The non-gaming world learned about the studio in 2014, when it dedicated its game, “Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments,” to the Heavenly Hundred — the anti-government protesters killed during the EuroMaidan Revolution that drove the Kremlin-backed President Viktor Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, 2014.
Frogwares’ Russian publisher famously wanted the studio to remove the dedication, but the studio refused. The publisher then dropped the game.
The studio ended up releasing the game in Russia through the digital distribution platform Steam. It became the most successful of their eight Sherlock Holmes games, selling 7 million copies.
Despite the very British theme of their trademark product, the studio says it brings something Ukrainian to its games.
“The Ukrainian identity in our games was always there. Even in our first game, there was a soul inside, although we were inexperienced and underfinanced,” says company CEO Waël Amr, a Frenchman who leads the mostly Ukrainian team of 80 artists and developers.
Frogwares has exclusive rights for the Sherlock Holmes-titled games. Critics and fans praise how attentive the studio is to the source material, the books by Arthur Conan Doyle, and how it challenges the player with special investigation techniques to make him or her feel like that world’s greatest detective.
The critical and commercial success of “Crimes and Punishments,” released in 2014, gave Frogwares the resources and ambition to make games bigger in production and scope.
Its ever-progressing Ukrainian developers invented the concept of the “free investigation” — where the player is free to pursue any cases and leads without much guidance, as opposed to the heavily scripted investigations in a linear environment typical for detective games.
But instead of using the new gameplay techniques for another Sherlock Holmes game, Frogwares tried something different.
Their latest game, “The Sinking City,” is set in a world inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft, a writer of cosmic horror novels, the kind that scares readers with phenomena beyond human comprehension.
Frogwares’s decision to turn from the rationality of Doyle to the madness of Lovecraft was in many ways informed by the sudden start of Russia’s war against Ukraine in the eastern Donbas region in 2014. In over five years, it has killed around 13,000 people and displaced another 1.5 million, according to the United Nations.
“Lovecraft is all about the forces that people cannot control, the insignificance of what we do. In Donbas, people tried to live their lives — and then the war happened. And they couldn’t do anything about that,” Sergey Oganesyan, Frogwares’ community manager, told the Kyiv Post.
“‘The Sinking City’ would not be as dark and grim without Donbas,” he added.
Waël Amrs, CEO of Frogwares game development studio, speaks with the Kyiv Post at the company’s main office in Kyiv on Oct. 10, 2018. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Running the studio
Amr founded Frogwares with another French expatriate in Kyiv in 2000. At the time, he was 25 and just out of the army. He had discovered Ukraine accidentally while travelling and liked how it was very “green and nice,” he says. The name Frogwares is a self-deprecating reference to “froggies,” an English moniker for the French.
“There is some disorganization in Ukraine, but that leaves more space for young and creative people. Already back in 2000 you could feel that youth in Ukraine had a lot more freedom than in Western countries, where things are very organized and very top-down,” Amr, now 44, told the Kyiv Post in October.
From the get-go, the company created a subsidiary office in Dublin, Ireland, a legal entity it uses to work with Western companies. In the 2000s, Amr says, Ukraine didn’t have dollars or euros in circulation. The national currency, the hryvnia, fluctuated so it was dangerous to use for their business.
“We couldn’t work with Western companies being just in Ukraine,” Amr says.
What started as a six-member team now has over 80 employees, the majority of which are Ukrainians: writers, designers, architects, programmers, etc.
Frogwares doesn’t disclose its profits, but business seems to be going well for the company. It is expanding and has recently built its own motion capture studio, where they record the movements of people and objects to transfer into games without having to create each move on the computer.
The company also benefits from the reduced costs of production in Ukraine compared to other markets. This and local talent are the reasons why foreign game development companies hire Ukrainian freelancers and open offices in the country. For example, French giant Ubisoft has offices in Kyiv and Odesa, and German Crytek has an office in Kyiv.
There are a few other successful Ukraine-based companies like GSC Game World and Vostok Games. Amr says that, with its vibrant arts and programming communities, Ukraine should have many more companies that make their own games.
“Ukraine is certainly not lacking talent. What’s lacking is entrepreneurs that are willing to redistribute wealth and foster people, not treat them as assets. And there is a lack of confidence in institutions and the state for independent developers to start their own studios. There should be more self-confidence too,” Amr says.
Forgwares’ game developers work on the studio’s latest game “The Sinking City” in the company’s main office in Kyiv on Oct. 10, 2018. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Staying independent
To be independent from publishers, Frogwares tries to diversify profits by developing and adapting games for various platforms. Its subsidiary Waterlily Games, based in the same office, develops casual adventure games for mobile platforms, like iOS and Nintendo Switch.
In 2013, with “The Sinking City” in the works, Frogwares also took on another Lovecraftian game called “Call of Cthulhu,” commissioned by its long-time publisher, Focus Home Interactive. But then the publisher canceled and handed that title to French studio Cyanide.
In an interview with the GamesIndustry.biz website, Amr said he’s not at liberty to discuss that case, but he wishes Focus all the best with “Call of Cthulhu.” Frogwares instead concentrated on its own game, “The Sinking City.”
Amr is generally critical of publishers, saying that his company is often “forced to find ‘shoe sellers,’ who don’t know anything about games” to release them. He hopes that, in the next 10 years, it will be easier for independent studios to publish games themselves digitally.
“The Sinking City” was released in June by another French publisher, Bigben Interactive. The game received mixed to average reviews from critics, who found some faults in its combat system and some technical issues.
However, the game was almost universally praised for what Frogwares does best: writing and the unique investigation system that doesn’t “hold the player’s hand” while solving cases.
“The way we do games is very influenced by our lives and experiences. We don’t treat them as just entertainment. We want people to carry our games with them (throughout their) life, and remember them years later,” Amr says.
Kyiv Post staff writer Denys Krasnikov contributed reporting for this story.
