Fifteen years ago, Sea Monster was born from an animation company restructuring with a belief that games could do more than entertain. Today, the Cape Town-based studio has developed more than 80 impact games spanning education, entrepreneurship, financial literacy and social change.

While the company says the business remains challenging, CEO Glenn Gillis believes the case for impact gaming has become clear, with Sea Monster now “mostly swimming with the tide” as more organisations recognise the role games can play beyond entertainment.

As Sea Monster marks its 15th anniversary, we caught up with Gillis to discuss the studio’s evolution, the changing African games market, its work in entrepreneurship and financial education, and what comes next as it looks towards its 20th anniversary.

PocketGamer.biz: Sea Monster recently marked 15 years. What does that milestone mean for the team?

Glenn Gillis: Incredible validation - and the fact that we're still here. When we started, it was actually clear to us that games were the world's favourite medium and that they could be used in a variety of contexts beyond just entertainment.

But it's never been easy. It's getting easier now, and we can see that we are now mostly swimming with the tide, not least because the science of what we do has become so obvious and the role of games has never been clearer.

Looking back, how did Sea Monster take shape and what were the early days like?

We were born out of the restructuring of an animation company and we always believed in the power of storytelling - and particularly stories where the player had agency, which is a very rough definition of what makes a game.

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