Singapore’s Booster Pack studio received nearly $1.5m in funding last week, but who is it?

Last week, Singapore-based game studio Booster Pack made the news for receiving US$1.48 million in funding from Cyberworld Studios, Ariel Star Group, and Kathrein Ventures. Its funding definitely surprised indie game developers in Singapore: who is Booster Pack, what has it done, and what will it do to deserve all that money?

Booster Pack is currently headquartered in the Games Solution Centre in Singapore’s startup-famous Block 71. Led by CEO and co-founder Kent Byers, it is a small studio of approximately seven, and plans to grow until it is about ten strong. The team is stacked with experienced game developers, and that’s just three of them featured above!

(See: Did you know Dusty Revenge was produced by a multimedia company?)

Byers founded the studio with ex-Lucasarts colleagues Shane Gavin, Chris Chu, and Benjamin Chevalier shortly after Lucasarts folded its Singapore studio back in May 2013. In the same year, the quartet had registered Booster Pack as a company. However, they only really got started in December last year.

Singapore’s Lucasfilm Sandcrawler building, where Lucasarts would have been based had it not been shut down.

Byers said that the team did consider heading back home to start up once Lucasarts Singapore closed down. “It could have been easier,” he said. But Gavin, Chu, Chevalier, and himself were already all based in Singapore, and they had reliable, local ex-Lucasarts colleagues to tap on as well.

Individually, each Booster Pack founder has had both corporation and startup experience. They each have spent approximately eight to 14 years in the gaming industry, and the team on a whole is aged between 28 to 36. “You could call us mid-career entrepreneurs,” Byers tells Games in Asia with a laugh. And no, he isn’t worried about his mid-career switch.

The team, Byers feels, already has a lot of experience from the development pipeline. Each of them have their own networks and can leverage on those. They already know how to make games. “There’s not too much of a risk,” Byers says.

But he is mum on what Booster Pack is actually creating. Techcrunch reported that the studio will focus on competitive mobile games and games using premium IP, but for further details, we will just have to wait until this year’s Q3, at the earliest.

It is still exciting though. Singapore’s indie game development scene is still stuck knee-deep in mobile gaming, and though we’ve been hearing PC creep into the industry buzz, many studios are still entrenched in what they know best. Hopefully, Booster Pack’s contribution won’t just shake up local development; it might just be able to herald a whole new start.

(Image source)