It was eight years ago when we first interviewed our next guest about a South Carolina-centric video game he was creating. After a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2018, he continued making incremental improvements to the game and ultimately pivoted to redesigning the game for mobile devices and it has now been officially released on the Apple app store. Mike Switzer interviews Brian Canada, Creator of the Bugs ‘N Boo Hags video game and he is also a professor of Computational Science and Chair, Department of Computer Science & Mathematics at USC Beaufort.
TRANSCRIPT:
Switzer: Hello and welcome to the South Carolina Business Review. This is Mike Switzer. It was eight years ago when we first interviewed our next guest about a South Carolina centric video game he was creating after a successful Kickstarter campaign. A couple of years later, he continued making incremental improvements to the game, but ultimately pivoted to redesigning the game for mobile devices and it has now been officially released on the Apple App Store. Brian Canada is creator of the Bugs and Boo Hags video game and he is also a professor of computational science and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Mathematics at the Beaufort campus of the University of South Carolina. Brian, welcome back to the program.
Canada: Hey, thanks so much for having me back. This is great.
Switzer: So give us an overview here, a history of, the development of this game and how it worked up to where we are today.
Canada: So the last time we had talked was, a number of years ago, and that was shortly after Bugs and Boo Hags, my retro style action game inspired by the folklore, history and scenery of the South Carolina Lowcountry, was showcased at, a gaming festival called PAX south as one of these up and coming indie games. And in the years that have happened since, there’s been quite a lot happening. And one major milestone was a successful Kickstarter campaign that happened in 2019. And what that did was it helped pave the way for continued development of the game, gave me some additional funding, to pay some collaborators and for me to hire an intellectual property attorney, among other things. And since then the game has grown considerably and incrementally. There’s more levels, there’s more characters, there’s a lot more polish, and more people have actually worked on the game with me. And eventually the focus, became getting it onto the iPhone and iPad platform largely to target a much broader audience.
Switzer: Describe this, Lowcountry folklore that this game is based on.
Canada: In the game you play a fictionalized version of the old high sheriff of the Lowcountry, Ed McTeer. You, play a fictionalized version named Jack McCleary, who is the witch doctor sheriff who’s been charged by the mayor of Beaufort to protect different locations around Beaufort county, many of which have historical significance from these supernatural creatures called Boo Hags. So the game itself combines elements of tower defense with the kinds of fast single screen arcade action games that I grew up playing in the early 1980s. What I like to think of as the golden age of arcade games, where the Boo Hag became sort of an inspiration for this video game, dates back to When I first moved to Beaufort County back in late 2010, to start working at USCB, as a professor. And in researching what was going to be my new home, I started learning about Gullah Geechee folklore, including this story of the Boo Hag, a creature that looks like an ordinary person, typically characterized as a female, looks like an ordinary person during the day, but slips out of her skin at night and in her skinless form is able to invade people’s homes and steal their life energy while they sleep. So when I learned about the Boo Hag as something distinctly tied to the low country of South Carolina, I thought, well, if I ever make a video game about this place, here’s my video game villain. And it basically just took off from there.
Switzer: All right, so what is your business model here?
Canada: So the game itself is presently exclusively on Apple’s app store for iPhone and iPad, but it is free and there are no microtransactions. There’s nothing to purchase in the game. You download the game and you get the full game. The ad, system that supports revenue generation is very minimal. Basically, if you die in the game, you can continue after watching an ad that’s essentially the business model for this version of the game.
Switzer: All right, so tell us what it has been like then to you. said you put together a team, you know, running an independent game studio in a small town, Beaufort, South Carolina, while also being a, full time professor.
Canada: Yeah, so doing all that is definitely a balancing act. And as a professor and a department chair, I really only have one month off contract to do any substantial work on the game. but Beaufort itself has been a very supportive place to do it. In particular the Beaufort Digital Quarter, which is our local tech incubator and co working space of notes. You know, I want to highlight one of my former students, a graduate of uscb, Bethany Felix, who is a art student here and had taken a class with me on video game production. And I hired her to really make the live oak trees look the way they’re supposed to in pixel art. That was the one thing that I really couldn’t do myself. And as a talented environment artist, she really helped.
Switzer: Well, Brian, thanks for your time again and for the update.
Canada: Thanks so much.
Switzer: Brian Canada is creator of the Bugs and Boo Hags video game. He’s also a professor of Computational science and chair of the department of Computer Science and Mathematics at USC Beaufort. You will find links to more information posted in the synopsis for this show at our webpage, SouthCarolinaPublicradio.org, where you can also hear the show again. And you can find us wherever you find Podcasts. With the South Carolina Business Review, this is Mike Switzer.
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