Babrus Khan is an artist, teacher, art director and comic book artist. We first came across his work when we noticed a promotion for a Cobra Kai online arcade game.
Check the game out here!
Q1: How did the decision to structure the gameplay as a collective story( a story showing both perspectives) come about and why was it so important to build the game this way?
So, at Frag Games, we are huge fans of the Karate Kid franchise, and we are all old school gamers; when there was talk of Cobra Kai season 3 promotional game, we were on the same page instantly; we knew it would be a retro experience, the question was what kind of game are we making, our first choice was a head to head fighting game something like classic street fighter, why? because Cobra as a show isn’t about just cobra kai, and every single character from the cast has a dedicated fan following. And in order to give each character proper respect, we thought ahead to head game makes perfect sense, but then this being a promotional activity and not full fledge experience the Agency, David Martin Munich told us about the short deadline, we had but few weeks to pull this off and we had the option to just step back and not do it at all, but like I said we are huge fans of the franchise and we decided to just find a way, and the first thing we did was we started looking at other casual experiences that could be translated into a retro experience and finally decided on doing a simple web-based game with super basic controls.
Q2: How did you get the opportunity to work with Netflix? What directions were you given concerning the project? What was the aim?
So the studio I work for is part of a family of European studios called remote control productions. The agency which was handling the promotions for Cobra Kai reached out to RCP with an idea, usually, promotions for TV and films mostly require a microsite and some on-ground activity so they were already set however there was a big what if with this whole thing, “what if we could do a retro game as well?” if it can be done then good if not, still cool. RCP had the project in their pool and they asked their internal studios if anyone is willing to take this on, almost everyone was concerned with their own prior commitments and most importantly the short deadline to pull this off, we were among the studios and we also had that talk, and like I said before, we are all fans of the series since I am the Art Director of my studio my boss asked me if I am up for it, my only condition was I will personally work on this with one of my juniors assisting me. The aim was simple, like the show with its retro vibe the game needs that, it’s a promotional activity and as much as we want to treat it as a full experience we can’t, we decided on going simple and doing as much as we can with art. The game loop needed to be simple as the target audience was not gamers but general audience, general audience don’t stick around for long and the loop needed to be short and simple. And just like that, Engineers went on prototyping and I started doing my own thing and having fun with this whole thing.
Q3: What other projects have you worked on that are similar to this type of cross-promotional marketing content? Do you feel the game was a success?
Before working at a game studio I have worked on films and animations, I made a name for myself in my country back when I was 20 or 21 as I was part of a team that did my country’s first animated TV show. From that point on, it’s been Tv, commercials, movies and games, eventually, as I progressed in my career I worked for agencies as well as designing promotional campaigns for various brands. I’ll be honest, I don’t have the numbers when it comes to engagement with the game we just did but we have been hearing good things, I’ve seen people play it and having a good time with it, I’ve heard good things from both the Agency and Netflix, so I’d say personally I’m very satisfied with what came out.
Q4: How does the video game offer an entry point into the franchise? What incentive does it give its audience to learn about and invest in the Karate Kid mythos?
To answer your first question, video games as an entry point into any franchise, well games, in general, is a much more personal experience, you are constantly tested, you try and fail you try you succeed you move on, in modern games narrative is a HUGE part of the deal. Games like Last of us, God of war, Red Dead Redemption even indie darlings like say Disco, Elysium etc, their playtime ranges from 12 hours to 40, 60, even 100+ hours, when you spend that much time with a character and that in your own terms that kind of experience stays with you. A lot of these games have now been adapted for shows and graphic novels, games I would say offer a far more in-depth experience than movies ( that’s my opinion I’m not saying it’s a fact ) having said that there is a side of gaming that is not intended for such things, it’s for you to have a good time and in our case, it’s there to support something else, the show in our case. Since this is a game for season 3, I think people who already have seen previous seasons would love to play something with their favorite character ( Hawk in my case) this game was mostly for the fans, to hype them up to make them pledge their allegiance to their favorite dojo ( Cobra Kai for life btw )
Q5: How long have you spent practicing your craft to get to your current skill level?
Drawing has been a passion since I was a kid, I couldn’t get formal studies or training so I just practiced and enjoyed it. My inspiration was Comic books ( DC Comics and Green Lantern to be precise ) . I landed a few gigs when I was 17 and that was it I just kept at it. I don’t know what my current level is but it’s nice to be able to draw the stories you want to tell. So yea, still practicing still getting better.
Q6: Do you think this type of content will become very commonplace for promotions and advertising? Do you consider yourself a pioneer in this space?
No not at all, not a Pioneer by a long shot. To be fair the credit here goes to the Agency they were open to that idea that’s the bigger step, because then you can always find people who can pull it off. The thing about Agencies is, communication design is probably the most powerful thing, when brands reach out to these agencies to develop ideas to promote their product, the creatives have some insanely fun ideas to engage the audience, making a game in our case was not something out of the box trust me, it hasn’t been done a lot of times sure, but the only reason it’s not done as much as we like it to be is only because what kind of product would be best fit for such an activity. In my agency experience, in order to get engagement on a food brand’s social media, we staged a hack. For 3 days people thought it was really hacked and then we revealed with a series of fun artworks (done by me) that the hackers were space chicken invaders.
Q7: How is your work on this project innovative in comparison to games you have seen and worked on prior to this? What fictional space does it occupy? Alternate retelling? New plotline?
Well, here the fun part was translating the cast of the show into a retro style. Before this the games, I had worked on were for Xbox and PlayStation, where I mostly handled design guides or already designed assets. As an artist I want to do things in my preferred style, here I finally got to do that.
Q8: What did you reference to create this game? Was there another game that inspired The Strike Back?
So you got a franchise that already has retro aesthetics, and for that, we were making a classic beat-em-up game our main inspiration was clear, Kung Fury. There were many other things but Kung Fury was the benchmark.
Q9: What is next for Babrus Khan?
I loved drawing because I was into comic books, for the longest time I wanted to be a comic book artist, I got commissioned by big studios for books and I finally got to do them and as I grew older I realized I picked art because it allows me to tell stories, I love telling stories. So in the future, I would want to translate one of the stories I have into a full experience, a proper game.
