Singapore has moved one step closer to its dream of being a gaming development hub capable of making blockbuster game titles. Japanese game developer Koei will be releasing its triple A title in Japan in the last quarter of this year.

Called Romance Of The Three Kingdoms Online, the game is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the historical novel.

About 80 per cent of the game was designed and developed by Singapore staff who comprised mostly Singaporeans,said Koei Singapore's general manager,Mr Raymond Wong. According to him,they required "a little hand holding, but that was to be expected".

The experience has been so successful that the Singapore studio has hoisted the recruiting flag once again for entry-level game designers, advertising on online ad portal JobsDB.

Koei, which has about 80 employees here, started its office here in 2005Patience, it seems, paid off for Koei, a big developer of games such as Dynasty Warriors and Gitaroo Man.

Its willingness to hire game developers at the entry level and train them led them to the creation of a successful game, said Mr Allan Simonsen, Coordinator of the Singapore chapter of the International Games Developers' Association,who pointed out that this would be one way gaming companies groom senior technology talent.

For such a technical industry, where science and engineering are critical parts of the development process, technical skills are not the end all. Bungie Studios, the developer of the big hit, Halo, is an example.

Of the five Halo developers, none has a programming-related degree. Their expertise runs the gamut from philosophy to literary criticism. Electronic Arts' vice-president for the Asia-Pacific, Mr Chris Thompson, agreed that soft skills are much needed.

"Game development is an art, not a science. It is just like writing a book, making a movie or creating a play. For movies,if you strip out the special effects,how many of those people left are technical? Almost none. While we have a huge need for technical managers, we also need many other disciplines."

But such people are rarely found in the Singaporean gaming industry, said Mr Simonsen.He said that much of the problem also lies with common misconceptions of game design jobs: "The actual job is often not as exciting as having the grand vision for a game. Designers are content creators with a mix of skill sets such as writing, and the right attitude to work their way up."

The key to this problem is to import foreign talent, as Mr Simonsen's games company, Boomzap, does, and wait for the industry here to mature just as Koei did. Initiatives from government bodies like the Media Development Authority(MDA) have also helped.

MDA's International Media Manpower Programme (IMMP), has attracted Mr Joe Dever, best known as the author of the internationally popular Lone Wolf series of young-adult game books.

Mr Dever is a lead games designer at Ksatria Gameworks, a local games company.

Other schemes include a Digital Media Traineeship programme to take on local staff as trainees through an apprenticeship programme,as well as working with renowned games development school Digipen's Asian campus to run a series of intensive games programming workshops to address some of the skills gaps facing the games industry here.