N-iX Games

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

https://www.rapyuta-robotics.com I'm the lead developer for the Robot importer project in Unreal Engine

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire N-iX Game & VR Studio, and what were your goals?

N-ix helps us accomplish our goals of building multiple types of robots in UE Skeletal Mesh components at runtime

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

N-ix has experience in various prior projects of simulation in UE https://www.n-ix.com/game-vr-studio/projects/category/unreal

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

They help us fix existing blocking bugs in the project, building BP robots for experimentation.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

There are 2 UE developers.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

They offer tremendous help, being extremely tenacious at fixing super-tricky bugs related to the integration of ROS into UE, also the constitution of robots based on skeletal mesh, both of which were thought to be very much infeasible. They are the first ones, as far as I know on the Internet, that could make a working Blueprint forklift in UE5, utilizing ChaosWheeledVehicleComponent.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

They host a private common slack channel with us for important notifications/progress updates, together with weekly Google Meet remote meetings. We work in different time zones with us thus most of the communication is done asynchronously.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They succeeded in accomplishing our project's goals with awesome expertise and perseverance.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

We generally don't really have big issues in communication, but their developers should truly deserve more of N-ix investment in their English skills (like with American/British colleagues coaching) to match their extremely competent technical expertise.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the creative director of a game development studio that makes strategy and RPG titles. My responsibilities include the art, direction, animation, and stories for the company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with N-iX Game & VR Studio?

We’re creating our first 3D game and brought N-iX on to help develop our concept art. We don’t have any internal staff with 3D animation capabilities, so we went to Ni-OX to both develop our overall visual style for the game and translate our concept into a 3D world that our engineering team could put into action.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We went through a fairly in-depth estimation process and worked with their project managers and team leaders to process all our deliverables. N-iX was communicative and made sure both sides knew exactly what we were talking about and what we were getting. This reduced the ambiguities in the estimate and made our count very accurate.

The game was developed using Unity, and they used Photoshop to create the style, along with a number of other tools that are leveraged when appropriate.

ZBrush was a starting point for most of the organic modeling they do, and they had people doing 3D Studio Max, Substance Painter and Substance Alchemy for texturing, and Marmoset for rendering. They had a highly-skilled group of people that used the tools within the flow that worked best for them, rather than pushing someone to work on a specific tool that they’re not comfortable with.

We hired them early to do our Kickstarter back in 2020, but with COVID-19, the game won’t release until February 2023. We had a very successful Kickstarter and raised $250,000. We’ve also released the game to 1,000 backers in a private alpha process.   

How did you come to work with N-iX Game & VR Studio?

Coming off of working on 2D games, this 3D game was a big jump for us. Our previous vendor was very skilled at 2D graphics, and we were happy with them, so we returned to the drawing board and did a full search for a new partner

Our goals were to find a partner who was communicative and could deliver on budget. We considered 16 different studios for around four-and-a-half months, going through interviews and then test projects with the best 3–4 projects. Finally, the top two options provided very serious estimates. We selected N-iX and chose a vertical slice, which allowed us to pick some concept art, 3D modeling, and animation — a thread to follow all the way through. This gave us a chance to see their quality work throughout all our required disciplines, and we committed to the full project with them after that.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $200,000–$1 million.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from August 2019–May 2021. They’ve also started a new project for the same game to fill in some of the gaps we found in our 3D artwork. That project is currently ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The visuals of the game are so impactful for their ability to be seen and recognized. Most recently, we submitted a video of our gameplay to a conference, and we were selected for a showcase at that conference — one of 12 games chosen for that distinction out of hundreds submitted. This got us a featured spot on the floor at the conference, which helped a lot of people come by, not to mention people who were watching from a distance.

People said that our visuals are clear and crisp, and that they had to stop by to see them. Our team is very happy with the visuals as well. We’ve received results that we’re very happy with.

They were very flexible with us, which we appreciate, and they were able to keep to the agreed-upon budget. We had a lot of stuff to learn, and they were very willing to spend time with us and teach us how to do things. They helped us take requests that were half-baked and turn them into something with definition that they could work with. They were very reliable in this regard.

The best indicator that a team is a good partner is if the customer comes back for another project, and we’ve done that.

How did N-iX Game & VR Studio perform from a project management standpoint?

They joined our Disocrd server and have lived there for a couple of years, joining us daily to chat, drop, and upload files. We also use Trello for project tracking. We’re a small team,

We did some of their process and some of our process, and they were using Trello so we jumped on that. We now use Trello internally ourselves.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We were very happy that we were able to give them our entire project. Their team was very excited about it as well. N-iX was able to help us define our vision and style for the world. At a concept level, they worked on the look and the lighting of the game. It’s a cyberpunk world, which means it’s futuristic.

The clothes have to be retro, funky, and different; the shoes have to have a certain look; and the crates and doors and cybernetic weapons all must have a very unique appearance. N-iX helped us craft all of the this from the concept stage. They were then able to follow this vision all the way to the end result where people are playing our game, and it looks just like we dreamed it would in the beginning.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are things I could mention here, but we are very happy with a lot of things, so I don’t want anything to be taken as a knock against them.

We’re very understanding of how contracts work for game studios, but N-iX was flexible with us, and we were flexible with them. We put certain parts of the project on hold as they had to pull certain team members away to work on other projects. They could have replaced those resources with other team members, but we wanted consistency throughout, so we were willing to wait until they became available again, as we had a longer timeline.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Look closely at their portfolio and what they’re especially good at. Also, spend extra time up front to discuss your requirements to figure out exactly how they can achieve your goals. This goes for any art studio you’re working with.  

It’s really important to know what you’re going to get and find proof that the studio will be able to deliver.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

We are an autonomous checkout company that builds software to infer which products shoppers take inside a store in order to charge them without interacting with a cashier. I mange a machine learning team responsible for building models to predict which items are being taken based on image/video data.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire N-iX Game & VR Studio, and what were your goals?

We wanted to build a simulation tool for the purposes of rendering videos of simulated shoppers moving around the store and shopping naturally, in order to have data to train and evaluate our models. We wanted to be able to simulate a wide variety of random situations over a wide variety of scenarios.

SOLUTION

How did you select N-iX Game & VR Studio and what were the deciding factors?

We engaged with a few game development studios and n-ix came back to us with a very organized plan, asked great clarifying questions until it was clear they understood the intent of the project, provided us with a breakdown and time estimate, and the services were reasonably priced.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

They implemented a project using the Unity game engine. They implemented a system to generate random trajectories for artificial agents, have them move around the virtual store, and take/place items according to a randomly generated script.

In addition, they built out a system to randomize the store layout, product arrangement, and textures, as well as provide detailed segmentation and depth maps during the rendering process.

How many people from the N-iX Game & VR Studio team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with 2 developers and 1 project manager during the project.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

The team has been making steady progress towards deliverables and has generally been very accurate with their time estimates when it comes to intermediate milestones. I've been happy with the results so far and am confident the team can keep delivering features as the project continues.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

The team is very organized, tracking progress towards goals in Jira. Developers come ready with specific questions which are usually addressed in a batch, which is great from a time management perspective. Usually we only need one or 2 followup conversations because they generally understand the task clearly up front.

We schedule periodic demos to visually display the current progress which usually invites additional questions and helps us better direct next features.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I've been impressed with the team's ability to infer additional features based on the high-level goals of the project. Sometimes they will demonstrate features I didn't explicitly ask for which are extremely useful for our goals of randomness and realism in the simulator.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

When I took over this project from a coworker of mine I wasn't clear on exactly when we started this project, since our company has multiple projects with n-ix currently.

It took me some time to get up to speed on the current project status, at first I didn't understand that we had only started a few weeks before, but once I understood the progress made a lot more sense. It would have been better to get up to speed on the timelines a little faster.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm the COO of a VR enterprise platform company that manages and distributes VR training content for large enterprise customers.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire N-iX Game & VR Studio, and what were your goals?

We hired N-iX Game & VR Studio to expand our content development capabilities so that we could scale the content our enterprise customers need for VR training without hiring incremental staff directly. Our goal was to imbed the N-iX team into our development process and pipeline for seamless growth and risk management.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We selected N-iX after reviewing previous project work, meeting with them directly and interviewing their developers and artists to ensure the skillsets and quality were up to our standards.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

We started our engagement by imbedding their artists into our existing art pipeline and imbedding a developer into our internal team as a transitional solution. We added in additional roles - more devs, project management, design and QA - incrementally until the N-iX team could manage an entire project from kickoff to launch with very little support from our team. We worked up to over 8-10 projects concurrently in production with them at one time, across Unreal engine and Unity.

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We currently have 14 dedicated resources (Unreal Developers, Unity Developers, Project Manager, Game Designer and QAs) and various artists as needed.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

Our customers are happy with the training modules N-iX has delivered and we continue to close additional work based on the quality of our VR training content.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

We meet weekly with the N-iX team to stay on top of project deliverables and any blockers. We also utilize slack for daily communication and email as needed. N-iX is very responsive to any issues we raise and answer us, even when it's off hours for them.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their commitment to delivery quality work and make sure that we, and our end customers, are satisfied with the VR training modules. Regardless of any difficult situation, N-iX Game & VR Studio delivers when needed.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

It took some time to build up the integration between the 2 companies and some coaching on our expectations around proactive communication as it would with any new team members internally or outsourced.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Wargaming.net is a Belarusian video game company headquartered in Nicosia, Cyprus. Wargaming switched to developing free-to-play online action games in 2009, including the military-themed team-based game World of Tanks (WoT).

I am an Outsourcing Manager. I manage external teams for the production of art content.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire N-iX Game & VR Studio?

We produce 2D art content for the WoT project. This is UI art, 2D characters and more.

SOLUTION

How did you select N-iX Game & VR Studio and what were the deciding factors?

They chose the required level of drawing, communication and meeting deadlines.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

World of Tanks (WoT) is a massively multiplayer online game, featuring 20th century era combat vehicles. It is built upon a freemium business model where the game is free-to-play, but participants also have the option of paying a fee for use of "premium" features. The focus is on player vs. player gameplay with each player controlling an armored vehicle, from the time of Pre-World War 2, to the Cold War-era.

How many resources from the N-iX Game & VR Studio team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We collaborated with 6 artists. There could be 10 employees at the peak. At different stages of work in the project, from one to two supervisors were present.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

A lot of different content was produced, which got into releases and received positive reviews.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We received all the functions and processes as expected.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They are high-level character artists.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

We plan to expand cooperation in the field of 3D graphics.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the COO of Triangle Factory

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

We build VR FPS games

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire N-iX Games to accomplish?

• cosmetic skins
• Character Models

SOLUTION

How did you find N-iX Games?

Online Search

Why did you select N-iX Games over others?

• Pricing fit our budget
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost

How many teammates from N-iX Games were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Cosmetic skins for weapons across multiple games

Character models for the new game

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Shared progress on established milestones with feedback to make sure we were aligned on the vision during the whole project. Very smooth.

Success was achieved by delivering the assets within the agreed budget and timeframe.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Project management is good, everything is delivered in time and budget. Costs are clearly tracked.

What was your primary form of communication with N-iX Games?

Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

They're genuinely friendly people who understand provided feedback

Are there any areas for improvement or something N-iX Games could have done differently?

If there was we already told them and they adapted to it

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I’m the co-founder and CTO of the company

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire N-iX Game & VR Studio?

We had the idea for a fighting game in the metaverse in which the characters were AI-powered NPCs. We built the AI in-house but partnered with n-ix on the unity game development and the art pipeline.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We interviewed over 8 game development teams - we were looking for deep unity skills, strong software engineering, deep understanding of 3D pipelines and most importantly, trustworthiness.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

We worked with 10 people including an associate producer.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Our game will launch in late March but we’ve been very happy with the work done by nix, their spirit of partnership, ideation, energy and overall skill set. We couldn’t have asked for a better partner.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

We have come to trust nix’s attention to detail in all matters. We were able to establish clear workflows for graphics and engineering within a few weeks of getting started.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

We are impressed with their deep understanding of 3D pipelines, great imagination, and responsiveness. They are very dependable & trustworthy.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Develop stronger overall software engineering skills.