Codemasters wants an Asian edge to its new mobile games

The Codemasters studio in Kuala Lumpur is tucked discreetly away in an office building in KL Sentral. If you weren’t looking for it, you could be forgiven for wondering if it even really existed amid the high-rise blocks of Plaza Sentral.

Unlike other triple-A studios nestled in the Southeast Asia region, Codemasters KL hasn’t yet pushed out any games it solely developed. Instead, it focuses on art, animation, and character work. It has contributed bits and bobs to many Codemasters games. But all that’s going to change.

Moving forward, Codemasters KL will be going into mobile game development, and in a big way. Lead technical art trainer Ivon Smith says that the studio hopes to pick up five teams of ten people each, and to develop and run at least five different mobile games. “It’s going to be a real challenge,” he says.

Codemasters KL has traditionally been about art and animation, but it’s going to recruit talent for the full mobile development pipeline, ranging from concept artists and coders, to producers. Majority shareowner Reliance Big Entertainment from India has a mobile development subsidiary called Jump Games, which is working to help Codemasters KL with its mobile teams and subsequent programs.