Free Lives (Pty) Ltd is an

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

South African

video game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a large ...

based in

Cape Town Cape Town ( af, Kaapstad; , xh, iKapa) is one of South Africa's three capital cities, serving as the seat of the Parliament of South Africa. It is the legislative capital of the country, the oldest city in the country, and the second largest ...

. Founded in April 2012 and led by

creative director A creative director (or creative supervisor) is a person who makes high-level creative decisions and, with those decisions, oversees the creation of creative assets such as advertisements, products, events, or logos. Creative director positions ar ...

Evan Greenwood, Free Lives is best known for creating the video game ''

Broforce ''Broforce'' is a side-scrolling run-and-gun platform video game developed by Free Lives and published by Devolver Digital. The game has the player as one of several "bros", based on popular culture action movie icons (for example, John Rambo ...

'' and has also developed the comedy game ''

Genital Jousting ''Genital Jousting'' is a party video game developed by Free Lives and published by Devolver Digital for Windows and macOS in 2018. Gameplay In this multiplayer party game, players attempt to move flaccid, disembodied penises into disembodied ...

'' and the

virtual reality Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated experience that employs pose tracking and 3D near-eye displays to give the user an immersive feel of a virtual world. Applications of virtual reality include entertainment (particularly video games), educ ...

game ''

Gorn The Gorn are a fictional extraterrestrial humanoid reptilian species in the American science fiction franchise ''Star Trek''. They first appeared in a 1967 episode of the original series, "Arena", in which Captain Kirk fights an unnamed Gorn on ...

''. Free Lives is primarily published through the American publisher

Devolver Digital Devolver Digital, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Austin, Texas, specializing in the publishing of indie games. The company was founded in June 2009 by Nigel Lowrie, Harry Miller, Graeme Struthers, Rick Stults, and Mike Wilso ...

History

Background

Free Lives was founded in April 2012 by video game programmer and creative director Evan Greenwood and is based on a property that is part studio, part house in

, South Africa. The titles developed by Free Lives do not sell well on the African continent and the studio's audience lies predominantly in the United States, as well as Europe, South America, and China. Free Lives staff have showcased their products at various North American and European

game convention A gaming convention is a gathering centered on role-playing games, collectible card games, miniatures wargames, board games, video games, or other types of games. These conventions are typically two or three days long, and often held at either a ...

s, and was part of the

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...

press conference at

E3 2017 The Electronic Entertainment Expo 2017 (E3 2017) was the 23rd E3, during which hardware manufacturers and software developers and publishers from the video game industry presented new and upcoming products to the attendees, primarily retailers a ...

. As of 2017, some of the Free Lives staff lives on-site, making use of a communal kitchen.

Video games

Free Lives first got involved with the video game industry when the team entered ''Rambros'', a

pixel art Pixel art () is a form of digital art drawn with graphics software, graphical software where images are built using pixels as the only building block. It is widely associated with the low-resolution graphics from 8-bit and 16-bit era computers a ...

shooter game Shooter video games or shooters are a subgenre of action video games where the focus is almost entirely on the defeat of the character's enemies using the weapons given to the player. Usually these weapons are firearms or some other long-range ...

inspired by 1980s and 1990s action movies, in the April 2012

Ludum Dare Ludum Dare (LD; , meaning 'to give a game', also referenced as LDJAM) is a game jam competition. It was founded by Geoff Howland and was first held in April 2002. It is currently run by Mike Kasprzak, who has been part of the team since the beg ...

game jam A game jam is an event where participants try to make a video game from scratch. Depending on the format, participants might work independently, or in teams. The event duration usually ranges from 24 to 72 hours. Participants are generally program ...

. ''Rambros'' was awarded for its graphics and humor at Ludum Dare, and Free Lives continued to expand and tweak the game in the following years. ''Rambros'' was soon renamed to ''

'' and was made freely available on the Free Lives website the next year. ''Broforce'' was first officially released through

Steam Greenlight Steam is a video game digital distribution service and storefront by Valve. It was launched as a software client in September 2003 as a way for Valve to provide automatic updates for their games, and expanded to distributing and offering third ...

in 2013, and received a spin-off titled ''The Expendabros'' in 2014. After one of the Free Lives team members met publisher

at the A Maze indie festival in Berlin, Devolver Digital signed the studio on and ''Broforce'' was published in 2015. Late 2016, Free Lives made the comedy game ''

'' available through the

Steam Early Access Early access, also known as alpha access, alpha founding, paid alpha, or game preview, is a funding model in the video game industry by which consumers can purchase and play a game in the various pre-release development cycles, such as pre-alph ...

program. In this multiplayer party game, players attempt to move flaccid, disembodied penises into disembodied anuses. Though ''Genital Jousting'' has been described as "extraordinarily juvenile", it was designed in part to deliver a sex-positive message to an audience that might not come to hear it otherwise. The studio stated in its developer

blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...

that heterosexual men are socialized not to discuss how they feel about

anal sex Anal sex or anal intercourse is generally the insertion and thrusting of the erect penis into a person's anus, or anus and rectum, for sexual pleasure.Sepages 270–271for anal sex information, anpage 118for information about the clitoris. ...

or penises touching each other, and wrote: "we were highly motivated by the fact that Genital Jousting gave us a vehicle to have those discussions amongst ourselves." Greenwood told ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'' that "at heart, the game is a play on masculinity, an attempt to disrupt entrenched notions of male power and authority." The game would not be allowed on major console platforms such as Xbox or PlayStation. When ''Genital Jousting'' was banned from

livestreaming Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but no ...

service

Twitch Twitch may refer to: Biology * Muscle contraction ** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation ** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction ** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle con ...

, Nigel Lowrie of Devolver Digital contacted

Steam Steam is a substance containing water in the gas phase, and sometimes also an aerosol of liquid water droplets, or air. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization ...

to see if the game could be livestreamed through the platform's internal broadcasting system. ''Genital Jousting'' became the first game to be broadcast through Steam's live streaming feature. On 10 July 2017, Free Lives released the

game ''Gorn'' for the

Oculus Rift Oculus Rift is a discontinued line of virtual reality headsets developed and manufactured by Oculus VR, a division of Meta Platforms, released on March 28, 2016. In 2012 Oculus initiated a Kickstarter campaign to fund the Rift's development, af ...

and

HTC Vive VIVE, sometimes referred to as HTC Vive, is a virtual reality brand of HTC Corporation. It consists of hardware like its titular virtual reality headsets and accessories, virtual reality software and services, and initiatives that promote appl ...

on Steam Early Access. Described as a "ludicrously violent VR

gladiator A gladiator ( la, gladiator, "swordsman", from , "sword") was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gla ...

simulator," ''Gorn'' features a physics-driven combat engine and a large amount of violent gore. Free Lives stated that they used the Early Access service in order to be able to expand the game with features players want to see.

Success

In an interview with ''MyGaming'', Greenwood stated that the studio had made approximately off of ''Broforce'' sales by 2016. The entire Free Lives team moved to

Tamarin The tamarins are squirrel-sized New World monkeys from the family Callitrichidae in the genus ''Saguinus''. They are the first offshoot in the Callitrichidae tree, and therefore are the sister group of a clade formed by the lion tamarins, Goel ...

on the

island nation An island country, island state or an island nation is a country whose primary territory consists of one or more islands or parts of islands. Approximately 25% of all independent countries are island countries. Island countries are historically ...

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...

for three months in late 2016, using the profit from their success with ''Broforce''. Free Lives produced a video series here titled ''Game Jam Island'', in which they documented their experience developing a video game on the popular vacation island. In January 2019, ''Genital Jousting'' became a finalist for the 2019

Independent Games Festival The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, ...

, under the ''Excellence in Narrative'' category.

Games developed

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://freelives.net/ 2012 establishments in South Africa Companies based in Cape Town Indie video game developers Video game companies established in 2012 Video game companies of South Africa Video game development companies