Behold Studios' second life

"No one knew that it was possible to make games in Brazil."

Saulo Camarotti set up Behold Studios, one of the longest running Brazilian developers, over 15 years ago. The studio is primarily known for 2012 RPG Knights of Pen & Paper, and 2017 sequel Galaxy of Pen and Paper. But when it first began, starting a games business in Brazil was not common.

"We were trying to get to international events, like GDC or Gamescom, trying to pitch our games – and it was kind of a big surprise for most of the publishers," Camarotti recalls. "They were not so comfortable with new studios. The gaming industry [in Brazil] was quite new at the time. So we got a little bit of prejudice, and it was hard for them to invest in the country.

"Even 15 years later, I do think it's still, for some, a wild thing to invest in a game production in Latin America. But publishers in the past five [or] ten years are getting used to the scene, getting used to working with Brazilians, so that's a good thing."

Brazil doesn't have a AAA industry yet, Camarotti notes, though it does have "big studios." They're just not necessarily producing AAA content – if they are, it's often work-for-hire with Western studios – but rather focusing on free-to-play mobile.

"We don't have the workforce that's coming out of AAA and going to other companies and improving the quality of game productions," he says. "So, for example, I live in Toronto, Canada. And I see that the students that are coming out of universities are going to work for a Ubisoft or a AAA, so they get experience, and sometimes they open their own studios. And here in Brazil, we are opening the studios out of necessity – there is no one to hire us.

"That was my case. 15 years ago, I was graduating from computer science, I wanted to work with games and in my hometown Brasilia – a huge city [of] three million people – there was no one to hire me, no company, no business. So I had to open my own."

A first iteration of the studio as a work-for-hire developer was set up in 2009, but it was shuttered in 2011 before rising from its ashes to become what it is now.

"At the time, everyone was saying 'You should do a work-for-hire business'," Camarotti recalls. "So I started doing some 'advergames' and serious games, or even co-dev – trying to at least. And for the first two years, it was alright but not necessarily good enough for us to keep on going. So we decided to close the studio."

Camarotti ended up forming a new team of four with former employees who were keen to keep making games, and adopted "a very indie approach to game development."

"That's when we started Knights of Pen and Paper; six months later, we were topline App Store and Google Play. And that was like, 'Oh, okay, so we can do our own games, we can create our own IPs'. So that's what we started focusing on."

What changed, Camarotti adds, is focusing on projects they truly believed in rather than chasing a business trend "for the money."

"That changed everything. Every time that we start a new project, and realise that we're doing that only because it's good for the market, or kind of an external motivation, it doesn't go well. But when we look inside, try to find things that we are truly enthusiastic about, that's when it shines. So I think that's what we learned."

The studio's latest project is Cosplay Club, another turn-based RPG but this time focusing on becoming a cosplayer. It was released in Early Access in December 2023, having been funded in only two hours via a Kickstarter campaign in 2022.

"We really want to get to the niche," Camarotti says when we ask about his expectations for the title. "We really want to find cosplayers and people that are very enthusiastic about cosplay or even people that want to be a cosplayer [but] don't have the skills, and we're trying to create this experience of an RPG, wholesome, heartwarming in a way.

"And we want to bring it to consoles, we want to come into mobile, and see what happens. We don't have numbers as in what we expect out of it, but it's just having fun and trying to find partners to bring it to consoles."

Behold Studios has remained small, with a team of eight split across Canada (three people) and Brazil (five staff).

"We feel that we are a Brazilian studio," Camarotti says. "Of course, we can benefit from being in both countries. We have tax credits in Canada, we have access to events and a lot of things. But 100% of our team is Brazilian, we hire only Brazilians," he laughs. "So we feel like a Brazilian team for sure."

But the introduction of a new legal framework in Brazil will slowly be changing things like access to tax credits for instance, as we discussed at length on Tuesday. And overall the industry in Brazil has come a long way since the early days of Behold Studios.

"The talent [in Brazil] is amazing," Camarotti says. "It's different from everyone that I've worked with, people are [such] hard workers, and they find their way. We don't have a lot of resources, we never did. But we can do pretty much everything. So it's really nice to have some Brazilians in the team, because they just come up with very creative solutions for everything. I think that's the biggest advantage of working with Brazilians. I do love the aesthetics of Brazilian [artists as well]. We have artists all over the world, working for every big studio."

But that's not to say the industry in Brazil is now completely devoid of challenges.

"We don't have the best internet broadband connections here," Camarotti says. "But we do have good ones – enough to be connected. It's not that cheap, but we do have a very big part of the population connected."

But when it comes to other practical aspects of running a studio in Brazil, Camarotti notes that Brazilians have truly embraced remote working, as we also noted in our overview of the market on Monday.

"Even 15 years later, I do think it's still, for some, a wild thing to invest in a game production in Latin America"

"You don't have to commute anymore, you don't use public transport that's not that good. Working remotely [is] really good. One thing that's happening a lot is Brazilians are getting jobs in other countries. So they're getting paid in US dollars, and living the life here. So I think that's a good thing. And they're starting to get a lot of experience because of it."

He adds that historically Brazil has always exported talent globally.

"And I'm one of the cases, right? I just went abroad, I wanted to live with my family and see what's out there. And it's good to be there.

"At the same time, right now the opportunities of working remotely but still being in Brazil [are] very good. So it's interesting, because Brazilians are cheaper if they're working remote, because Brazil is a cheaper place to live compared to North America and Europe. It's very interesting to see people getting jobs in the US and getting [paid in] dollars. $30,000 per year is huge here."

More personally, Camarotti highlights his personal challenges of running Behold Studios since the success of Knights of Pen & Paper.

"Throughout the first ten years, my job was 60% dedicated to the studio and probably 40% dedicated to the indie scene. I was volunteering to host game jams, I was trying to bring publishers, I was a regional director for [the Brazilian trade association], I was trying to promote the independent game development scene. And that took a lot of effort. And no return out of it. But at the same time, it was a big part of my [job].

"And I think that it was a big challenge, because I was not just focusing on my own business, I needed to promote everyone, and teach, and it was important for me as a studio to have a good environment of other studios, and so we can co-develop or share experiences, and we didn't have any anyone that was teaching us. We kind of were pushing the cart forward."

"Investors and publishers should look to other countries as a place to get inspired and create games from different perspectives"

Brazil is the fifth biggest market globally in terms of the number of active games players, with Camarotti saying Brazilians are particularly occupying the online space of titles like PUBG, Free Fire, or Fortnite.

"It's a huge audience, and they're very well connected," he says. "I do think there's a lot of opportunities in free-to-play games, especially games that run well on low end devices. I think that's the core audience in Brazil, for sure."

He adds in a laugh: "And that's not what I'm doing. I'm doing the opposite. I'm doing high end, trying to do console games, and premium."

Concluding our chat, Camarotti highlights that the games industry is in crisis worldwide – and that's a good reason to look at booming markets like Brazil.

"These past two years, it's just a lot of struggle and I do think that investors and publishers should look to other countries as a place to get inspired and create games from different perspectives. That could be very important for the whole industry. So going to Brazil, Argentina, or Uruguay, and trying to find different talents. And I know that there's some opportunity out there, coming up for BIPOC or queer people. And I do think that also for Latinos, that would be really nice to see more games that are different."

Additional contributions by James Batchelor