Indonesia's Toge Productions Wants to Grow Like a Bean Sprout

Toge Productions is a game developer studio in Indonesia which has produced several games such as Necronator (see trailer at the bottom) and Planetary Conflict. It has won several awards to date. We spoke with Kris Antoni Hadiputra, the co-founder and director of Toge Productions.

1. When was Toge Productions started, and how exactly was it founded?

Toge Productions was founded by Sudarmin Then and [myself] Kris Antoni. We actually started as a student project team back in late 2007 when we were completing our bachelor degree in Murdoch University, Perth. Back then we wanted our team name to be funny, ridiculous, exotic, and sound totally Indonesian (because the team members were all Indonesian students). So we come up with the name “Toge”, which means “bean sprout” in Indonesia. Our philosophy is “to grow and adapt quickly” and that “all great things start from something small,” just like a bean sprout. After graduating we went to work on different game companies, but even so we managed to work on small flash games as a hobby. In 2009 we decided to quit our jobs and start our own games development company.

2. Can you tell us how many games have you made so far?

Since 2009 we have made over a dozen games. Some of them even won international awards and recognitions. We have always focused on quality over quantity. We wanted to deliver our best, therefore there’s a lot of work spent on polishing tiny details in our games and we always try to push our limits further.

3. What is the most successful game you have made so far?

It’s hard to say because most of our games can be considered successful in different ways. The game that has been played the most would be “Infectonator: World Dominator” with over 159 million total gameplays world wide. “Planetary Conflict” would be our most critically acclaimed title which has won The Mochi Award for Best Multiplayer Game at the Flash Gaming Summit 2011 in San Francisco. Our most commercially successful would be our latest title “Necronator 2,” which recently has also become a Mochi Award finalist in the Flash Gaming Summit 2012.

4. I saw that most of your games are either on iOS, Facebook, Flash. Why do you prefer these platforms?

We’ve been making Flash games since 2008 and we have become quite familiar with the technology. We chose the Flash platform because it’s very easy to use, develop, and monetize — perfect for small independent studios with a shoe-string budget like us. Adobe has also released a feature in Flash where you can export your games directly to iOS and Android without changing any codes, which helps us boost our production time. Even so, we are not limiting ourselves into one single platform. We are currently expanding our expertise into different technologies as well, such as Unity3D and HTML5.