Running with the Big Dogs
No newbies allowedCapricious consumers aren't the only thing an idealistic, young development team needs to worry about. It's tough to get to the game business if you're a nobody. "New IP [intellectual property] does not really get made by new development teams," says Myllyrinne, and explains that he is talking about major titles. Publishers will not fund new intellectual property designed by a small developer: "[The publisher] may say that they might, and entertain the idea and talk to you for a while, but unless you have a track record of success they're usually not interested." 
With Alan Wake, Remedy makes a departure from the pure FPS genre, and steps into uncharted territory. "[Publishers] know that we're good at that shooting thing, and that we're good at storytelling."
Remedy does a considerable amount of development in-house before approaching potential publishers, as even an established developer will need more than a great plan when moving to new territory. "People know that we're good at doing action, we didn't really need to show that to the publisher." Remedy knew that moving outside the pure FPS genre would be perceived as a risky move, so they developed tools and demos to answer the publishers' most likely questions. "We took the success with Max Payne, and funded ourselves for quite a time." The result is a publishing deal with Microsoft, which Remedy is very happy about. "We get a lot of support from Microsoft. They want to have great-looking graphics to showcase Xbox 360 and Games for Windows, and we want our games to look great." Telltale Games had a rather similar experience with Sam & Max. Most publishers that they approached simply refused to consider publishing point and click adventure games. After the success of the first episodes of Sam & Max, says Kevin Bruner, the publishers were much more interested, and Telltale was in a far better bargaining position. Sam & Max Season 1 will appear later this year as a boxed version, with a retail price that's close to the downloadable version. Working harder makes you vomitAccording to Matias Myllyrinne, small game developers have to steer clear for outdated production strategies. "There seems to be a trend in the industry, especially with some of the old-school American developers, that 'we'll just work harder'. It makes me cringe, I vomit internally," Myllyrinne belches. "We're not meeting our schedules - we'll just work harder. We have too many features - we'll just work harder. Our team needs a vacation, but we're not making enough progress - we'll just work harder. We'll work the Sundays, we'll work the Saturdays - we'll work harder." Myllyrinne would rather work smart than hard. A "work harder" environment gives good results for about two weeks, after which productivity drops dramatically. This is especially devastating in a creative field like game development, where people should innovate. Instead of telling their people to work harder, company leaders should think and adopt a different mindset: how do they actively develop their company instead of reacting to crises. "Change comes through crisis or growth," says Myllyrinne. Many companies, just like people, have a bad habit of changing only when their normal routines no longer function in a new situation. "It's a lot less painful to proactively develop and grow." Know your audience"As our target [audience] becomes older and older, they're not able to clock in 30-35 hours of gameplay time [per week]. Some of us try," says Myllyrinne. Gaming used to compete with TV and movies over people's free time, but now YouTube, MySpace, chatting and internet surfing are the real rivals. Gamers are generally looking for shorter 30-45 minute gameplay sessions, but not universally: some people still look for a more engaging, longer gameplay experience, so the market is diversifying. 
Ever-growing development budgets mean more pressure for the developer. If a game that cost $2 million to make wasn't really a hit, you could sweep it under the carpet. "Unfortunately that's not the case if we're talking about $30 million. People tend to notice."
Kevin Bruner acknowledges the changing playing patterns and audience expectations, and has a solution. "One of the things that is great about episodic games is that pretty much everybody finishes the game." This is rewarding for not just the customers but the developer as well: "Every customer sees all the content that you built for them, so it's really satisfying from the developer's point of view." In traditional game design, "the worst position in the gaming business is being the second to last level designer." Games are so big that most people only see one-third or half the game before running out of time or interest. The few that finish the game plow through the last levels just to get to the end. Bruner also says that he loves getting material out of the door, and that Telltale benefits greatly from the feedback they get from their audience. "At LucasArts, most of us were spending about three years making a game. It's a big chunk of your life, and most of us got really tired of making three games in a decade." Telltale has developed and published 18 games in the last three years. With frequent releases, a developer also has a tight feedback loop with their customers. "You can fix stuff as it goes. Even if your game is really good, [you might be] able to find out that one little bit that might get you 5-10% [more] in a review." Even more importantly, the developer gets to hear what's important to the customers, and the customers see their feedback having an effect. Some of the feedback for the first episode of Sam & Max was that it was too easy, and Telltale was able to adjust the following episode accordingly.
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