If you’re a benchmark industry insider, you’ll hardly find better person to talk to than Oliver Baltuch, currently serving as President of Futuremark Corporation. This engineer earned his spot in the industry while working for National Semiconductor, Vadem, SMSC, NVIDIA, Netcell and Chartered Semiconductor Corporation. Over the last few years, he’s been helping benchmark maker Futuremark reinvent itself from a small enthusiast company, founded in Espoo, Finland, into a corporate powerhouse. Oliver is located in Futuremark’s Silicon Valley office, in a lovely small city of Saratoga, CA.

Oliver likes to spend his free time exploring new areas.

With the upcoming release of next-generation 3DMark® Vantage, we felt this was quite a good reason to have an interview, so without further adieu, we give you Ollie.

TG Daily: Ollie, Futuremark had a very exciting 2007 with the launch of YouGamers.com and PCMark® Vantage. We’re barely starting 2008 and you’ve already announced another project, Futuremark Games Studio. Could you tell us more about your current projects and how many fronts are you battling right now?

Oliver: Hi Theo, both of these are related to our renewed strategy which calls for more aggressive growth. We are operating on three new and different business areas: Internet (YouGamers.com), PC and perhaps also mobile (Futuremark Games Studio) and mobile/handheld/embedded benchmarks and demos with our new Content Creation Tool Chain (CCTC).

TGDaily: How large is the Futuremark operation as such and by how many people have you expanded in 2007? What is your plan for employment in 2008?

Oliver: At the end of 2007, we were 68 people. We actually doubled our headcount within the last two years. Right now, we’re at a pretty good size for all the things we’ve got on our plates right now...

TG Daily: When it comes to YouGamers.com, the site has existed for over half a year now, so how satisfied are you with the growth of the site?

Oliver: We’ve put in a lot of effort to bring up YouGamers.com, to offer something unique to the gamers that no other site in the world offers. Regarding the amount of investment, we’re very satisfied with the amount of users and traffic we’ve been able to grow. I think we’re now within world’s top 20 gaming web sites and our intention is to grow much bigger.

TG Daily: With your tradition in benchmarking, is Futuremark Gaming Studios going to build on that and create games that have advanced benchmarking tools inside, or do you want to separate the two as much as possible?

Oliver: Futuremark Games Studio is still pretty new. Right now the team is focusing on creating an amazing game play experience with breathtaking visuals that add to the game play. Our benchmarking team is still engaged in creating professional benchmarks (PCMark® and 3DMark®) that engage the consumer while being must-have tools that are relevant for benchmarking professionals (IT Managers, Journalists, Heavy Duty Overclockers) and consumers.

TG Daily: We would like to hear your personal opinion of how do you see impact of physics itself in the future of gaming?

Oliver: OK, personally I love the thought of Physics in Gaming as long as it adds to the game play experience. All the major games today involve some type of physics from flying mud in rally racing, to the arc of bullets in sniper modes. Depending on game genre that can mean better water, gravity, collisions etc...it can also add dramatically to the look of a game with clouds of dust or steam obscuring your escape from a large monster’s claw in space.

One of returning tests in 3DMark is of course, never-ending Battle for Proxycon. This time around, space battle is one of epic proportions...

TGDaily: Let’s turn back to the core business, benchmarking - Futuremark is a known player in that arena with the renowned 3DMark® and PCMark® series of benchmarks. How do you see benchmarking evolving in future?

Oliver: PC hardware and software is constantly evolving, making the PC’s we use not only faster, but, adding tremendously to features and functionality. We are working with the finest engineers in the PC industry to define the next set of benchmarks that will include the ability to test that new hardware and software that was only dreamed about a couple of years ago. As a PC enthusiast with an engineering degree myself, I can hardly wait to see what new inventions will be coming.

TG Daily: With PCMark Vantage, Futuremark started with an interesting concept of paying for benchmarking, with PayPal being used for the simplified version. What are the reactions from your users?

Oliver: We had a good response to the PayPal, it made it much more convenient for our customers to purchase the software and I’m really glad that our service team in Finland was able to integrate the new functionality into our store. From the very start, serious benchmarkers have purchased the Advanced Editions as well as OEM’s and IT Managers have purchased the Professional Editions. With PayPal, a whole new generation has access to our software.

TG Daily: Do you plan to continue this business model with 3DMarkVantage, which is an immensely popular benchmark?

Oliver: Yes. The new model we started with PCMark® Vantage was to have a trial version for no cost and then a Basic Edition which could be used over and over for less than 5 Euros (less than the price of a computer gaming magazine or the sandwich that I buy while waiting in endless airports and train stations to travel to my next meeting). This gives us greater freedom to use higher end tooling (like Softimage XSI) and computers to really concentrate on delivering the kind of quality products that are expected by those same customers.

TG Daily: Here’s a kicker... could you tell us, at the end, what was the cost of development of PCMark® Vantage and 3DMark® Vantage, just to get the feel of the actual cost that Futuremark has to eat in order to be able to produce these titles?

Oliver: The following numbers are approximate (could be even more) - PCMark® Vantage: 1M Euro (US$1.5 Million) while 3DMark® Vantage had a budget of around 3M Euro (US$4.5 Million). This includes the cost of the team of over 30 top flight engineers and artists working for over two years on each of the benchmarks, building new engines and art from scratch as well as a highly skilled technical web team working day and night on the Online Results Browser (ORB) to be able to answer the question of how the our benchmarkers fit within the community of 20 Million results. On top of that, it includes workstations and professional external server services, multiple software licenses, travel to our many partners and conferences to learn the latest techniques, offices and the myriad of things that are required to create a breathtaking product that is both technically correct and beautiful at the same time.

TG Daily: Thank you for your time.

Oliver: Thanks Theo, I appreciate the questions and Futuremark looks forward to doing another interview with you. Also, congratulations on the new spot at TG Daily.

And in the end...

You could see that expansion of Futuremark is nowhere near being over. After launching a gaming website, and a gaming development team, only time will tell what is Futuremark’s next move. Game engines used in 3DMarkVantage will be a good base for future development of original IP content from FGS.

In a way, with foundation of FGS, Futuremark makes a full circle. Company started in Finland together with Remedy (who still own a part of the company), and from 3DMarks that utilized Max Payne’s Max-FX engine - we have come to the benchmark developer becoming a games developer.

While Oliver did not want to go into details, it is more than obvious that upcoming Games Developer Conference in San Francisco (Feb 18th-22nd) is going to shed some more light on plans from this very interesting company.