Who is team behind this game?

Hello all. Today, I hope to answer following question: Who are the people behind this project and how did this game come to be?

Well, this has started as a pure hobby project by two guys from two different sides of Earth; one in Croatia, EU(click here to learn about Croatia) and another in Missouri, US (click here to learn about Missouri). I am Dejan Kober, main developer of this game and I’m situated in Croatia, EU and Shawn Kober, Missourian who lives for Lake of the Ozarks and people living on and around it. We are not related, but who knows, we might be some long relatives. That doesn’t stop us from calling each other “cousin” 😀

And we share similar passions and professions; I’m a 3D artist, animator, programer and entrepreneur, running my small business (DD3D Studio), focused on 3D animation, game development and marketing, specialized for Maritime industry (worked for many professional simulation providers, cruising, shipping and technology companies) and Shawn has been producing TV shows for major networks regionally and nationally as well as being, video editor, photographer, marketing visionary, entrepreneur and person who is deep in to all new technologies. His passion about boating and Lake of the Ozarks was resulted in me getting obsessed with LOTO, and has resulted in two of us starting this ambitious project, called “Boat Life – Lake of the Ozarks”

Dejan Kober

Shawn Kober

Start of a game

This game started as a result of me and my company working for years for Danish Maritime Institute; ForceTechnologies. For them, we developed highly optimized 3D environments and ships for their professional ship crew training simulator. Over the years, we developed over 100 harbors and areas all around the world for them. And we wanted to use that knowledge and experience to make our own project. So an idea was born about a mobile boat simulator video game.

Since Croatia is a well known maritime country with an amazing coastline, we started to work on a small boat simulator set on the Croatian coast. But as it usually goes with “side projects” they tend to stay “on side”. So was this boat simulator game, and progress was slow over years.

In the same time, Shawn and I collaborated on a few projects and our friendship moved into the professional field as well. Shawn with his Media Production company, BigPlanetMedia was at time doing quite a lot of filming of boating events on Lake of the Ozarks, I got interested in that… And one thing led to another, and I was completely hooked on the boating scene and life on Lake of the Ozarks!

So, moving my boating game from the Croatian coast to the Lake of the Ozarks felt like the best move ever done 🙂

What comes next?

And here we are; now almost two years since we made the first demo of the game on LOTO, we are slowly moving to the goal of making this game a reality. We do occasionally have some help, but for most of things, we are still “two-man-band” and this is still very much a “side project”, so progress is slow, but we are set on our goal to make this game a reality!

I will write in more details about what we plan to do with this game, what kind of features there will be, how it will benefit the local community, how we can educate and inform people through the game and how we all can have fun in it, so stay tuned; make sure to follow us on Facebook, where we share most of things regarding development process.