The creative team at AdHoc Studio wanted their game to look like a premium animated television show, so they decided to find an animation studio rather than try to achieve that look through traditional game development. The search for the right partner proved challenging.
Most of the well-known studios they pitched to either were not interested or could not accommodate the game development aspects. Three-dimensional characters with two-dimensional backgrounds was an ambitious goal, but AdHoc had already settled on this style.
The solution came from an unexpected place. They eventually came across a small animation studio in Thailand called Igloo Studios, who made really cool apple juice commercials. As one director put it, we could kind of squint and start to see Dispatch for the first time.
Igloo Studio is based in Bangkok and was started in 2007 by Nat Yoswatananont, who serves as its CEO. The partnership between AdHoc and Igloo was not entirely new. Their partnership began a few years earlier during the My Daemon project, when AdHoc reached out after discovering Igloo's work on an interactive project.
The collaboration on Dispatch introduced new creative challenges. With experience working with international clients, Igloo was prepared for cross-border collaboration, though the most challenging aspect came from designing a workflow for branching scenarios.
One of Dispatch's most praised aspects is its impeccable style, with the game truly feeling like a proper superhero cartoon of yesteryear. The sharp writing and high production values of Dispatch impressed voice actors including Aaron Paul, Jeffrey Wright, Laura Bailey, and Travis Willingham.
The game received generally favourable reviews and was widely acclaimed, selling over 3 million units within two months of its release cycle completion. Dispatch sold over one million units within the first ten days and was on course to beat AdHoc Studio's three-year sales target in just three months.
For Igloo Studio, the collaboration marks another step in Thailand's growing presence within the global animation and game development ecosystem. What began as a recognition of craft in unexpected places became a defining partnership for both studios.