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Meeting Report Alex
Seropian Gives Post Mortem of Stubbs the Zombie November 2005 After
guests arrived and signed up to win a few lightsabers
courtesy of Virtual Partners
Training Center, Carrie Gale introduced Alex Seropian. Seropian is the founder and president of Wideload Games,
Inc. He left He talked
about how Wideload was founded to create and
develop original games. While everyone else is doing one thing, he wanted to
take Wideload in a different direction entirely. To
help, he came up with the Wideload Commandments: ·
Thou Shalt Establish Creative
Direction ·
Thou Shalt Own Thine Own IP ·
Be Nobody’s Beeotch ·
Keep Overhead Low He
elaborated by talking about how the Wideload brand
should mean something to fans and be independent. It’s a lot easier to
be original when you don’t need to worry about appeasing a completely
different party, especially if that party owns the copyright and trademarks
over your head. Wideload was going to be able to
dictate its own success, create its own value, and try to make deals with
partners that have the same goals. Alex also mentioned how there
shouldn’t be a sharp ramp up and down between projects. Even though
costs and requirements are increasing, it was possible to limit costs by
keeping the team small in the first place. He touched upon Brooks’ Law
and noted that with the smaller team, communication was faster and there was
reduced overhead. Talent was hired as needed instead of paying for a huge
team that would be ultimately underutilized. What
Went Right Alex noted
that the ease of communication helped to foster a truly creative environment.
People weren’t worried about saying the wrong thing in front of
management, and so any idea could be acted upon and developed by anyone
within earshot. Some of the zanier ideas made it into the game. They had
the ability to say no to bad deals and didn’t have to live hand to
mouth. Mutually beneficial deals were easier to get than they might have been
for another developer. The cost
structure helped mitigate costs, even though they ran four months behind
schedule. They paid for the assets they needed instead of paying the salary
of an artist, for example. They
contracted out work, and they scaled up and down as needed. They
weren’t stuck with employees that could negatively impact an otherwise
massive team. They made
use of local talent. Quite frankly, Wideload also leveraged the Internet to get shorter iteration
cycles, which led to more iteration cycles, which led to improvements that
wouldn’t otherwise be possible. The real time communication and concepting forums helped keep everyone on the same page,
even with the contractors. What
Went Wrong Unfortunately,
the proprietary engine they used (Halo) didn’t have a lot of
documentation. There was the question of it being worth the effort of
training a contractor who will only be on the project for a few weeks. While the
contractors were great at keeping costs low, Alex found that hiring was
difficult since there weren’t many reference assets and tests
available. There wasn’t a single producer, and someone needed to manage
the art direction and contractors. This task fell to the internal staff,
which took them away from the actual work they might have otherwise been doing.
The resulting feedback delays lengthened iteration cycles. Crunch mode
still occurred, and the contractors were not going to crunch for the internal
team. Conclusion In the end,
the “Grand Experiment” was a success. Stubbs the Zombie
shipped and Wideload is still around to make
another game. By keeping control of the creative direction of the company,
the size of the team, and the budget, Wideload was
able to create a funny, original title with few major obstacles. With major
figures in the game industry warning us about the rising costs of game
development, perhaps Wideload’s development
model might inspire others. This month’s chapter meeting report was kindly
provided by Gianfranco Berardi,
a regular poster in the IGDA IMAGES
ABOUT ALEX SEROPIAN: Alexander Seropian is the
founder and president of Wideload Games, Inc.
At Wideload, Alex has crafted a new kind of game
developer that utilizes an external development model similar to film
production. Alex began his career as the founder and CEO of Bungie Software. Alex grew Bungie
to become a leading independent developer of video games and member of the
Inc 500. Under his guidance, Bungie created
some of the most celebrated game franchises in the industry, including SPONSOR: Our sponsor for this month’s meeting is James Murphy
at Get Up to Speed Fast! As Autodesk Media and
Entertainments original dealership & training center we offer not only the
best creative tools, but also the ability to master those tools in less time.
Contact us to enroll in one of Virtual Partner’s many training classes,
so you can perfect your skills, be confident in your job, and create
award-winning work. www.virtualpartners.com/ For
questions, comments or suggestions about the |
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