Denki man hired at new games outfit

Glasgow-based digital creative agency Chunk is to launch a dedicated games company, Develop can reveal, and has hired a former Denki developer to spearhead the new division.

After six years with Denki, Stewart Hogarth left the Dundee outfit in April when the studio was financially forced to make severe cuts into its workforce. Denki at the time revealed that – much to the amazement of industry peers – its recent title Quarrel didn’t score a publishing deal.

“Despite the game being finished, super polished, and everyone who plays it having great fun with it, we’ve slowly been remembering why we got out of the traditional games industry for so long and escaped to Interactive Television in the first place: this industry doesn’t value good games,” said Denki co-founder Colin Anderson.

Yet Hogarth has landed on his feet, and will now act as designer and developer for the digitally-focused Chunk Games. He said he felt “really lucky to have jumped from one talented team of people to another”.

Chunk has made games in the past, as part of its remit as digital creative agency, and has scored game deals with the likes of Channel 4, the BBC and car manufacturers.

“The main reason we’re creating a dedicated games company is because we want to be the best, and the only way to do it is to be steeped in games,” said Chunk creative director Donnie Kerrigan.

“There’s certain things we’ll take from Chunk Digital, understanding brands and marketing is really handy for Chunk Games, but the culture and ways of doing things is quite different from a digital agency,” he added.

“It’s also much cleaner and easier – people who buy our own games see we’re a games company and brands know they’re dealing with games people.”

Hogarth has already begun work at Chunk Digital, before the games division fully launches towards the end of the year.

“The guys here have been really receptive to my slightly off-the-wall method of game development, and I really appreciate that,” he said.

“At the moment we’re in the process of defining the types of games we’d like to make. Although we’ll still make branded games, we‘ll also make our own independent games too. We’re happy to turn our hand to any style, but there are certain key ingredients and a level of quality that we’ll inject into all our games, which we hope we will become recognised for.”

Hogarth will also soon be contributing his own Develop Blog posts, discussing the ups and downs of indie development.