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Running with the Big Dogs

Running with the Big Dogs

The Small Have a Break

Remedy Entertainment numbers just 32 people at the moment, and Matias Myllyrinne sees that as a definite strength. "The industry needs fresh blood," he says. "Gamers want new IP. They want to play NHL 2007, NHL 2008 and NHL 2009, but they also want something new." Myllyrinne says that the key value isn't head count but generated revenue per head - the higher that is, the better you can compensate your employees and attract the best talent. Small game development teams should remember to keep their operations "fun, flexible and agile", which is something that larger companies are unable to do. "If you were doing annual releases of sports titles or you needed to hit certain movie targets, you'd probably like your productions to run like a factory - kind of like mass-producing aspirin [or] running McDonalds." Remedy sees itself as more like a research and development lab, where they give their teams a lot of autonomy, time and space to experiment. Their philosophy is to make their product marketable and accessible, and position it to stand out from the competition.

Telltale Games is a small, independent game studio of 35 people that also publishes its own games. "That's why we need partners," says Kevin Bruner. "Finding the right partners is a huge deal." Telltale is partnered with GameTap, and Bruner says they've been very happy with the partnership. "GameTap has been great for us. They didn't tell us to change Sam & Max to a Simpsons Road Rage game, or something [else] Sam & Max is not."

Work on your strengths

Remedy wants to "deliver cinematic games because we're good at storytelling". They have no plans to make a multiplayer mode for Alan Wake, as other people can do much better multiplayer games: "for multiplayer we play CS [Counter-Strike]", says Myllyrinne. Remedy focuses on their core competence and tries to outsource, buy freelance or drop any and all features that don't fit into it. The company plans their production around a long-term strategy: for example, three of their environment artists and one concept artist spent around 24 months working on procedural tools that now allow Remedy to create a 10 x 10 kilometre game world in "insane detail" for Alan Wake. Behind this strategy is a conscious design choice - after Max Payne, Remedy decided that they wanted to have much larger environments in their games, and to model them using traditional methods would have required hiring an army of artists ("It's not like we didn't have the money to do that," Myllyrinne quips). He points out that their efforts and strategy are very similar to those showcased by Avalanche Studios.

Telltale Games is also very keen to focus on what's critical. Kevin Bruner stresses the point that in episodic gaming, schedule is king. You can't slip your deadlines, or you'll lose all your credibility and probably many of your customers. "To accommodate the schedule you need a fast and production pipeline. All of our technology is focused on tools and production pipe." Telltale doesn't waste time on features that they don't need: "We're a three-year old game company with no particle systems. It's really bizarre, but adventure games don't really need any." For episodic game development you need a parallelized production pipeline where everything happens simultaneously: you can't wait for one feature to finish before adding another. The good thing about this approach is that if you don't finish a feature in time for one episode, you have the option to use it in a later one.

Have a Plan

Finally, Matias Myllyrinne reveals his company's ambitious plan: "Remedy wants to be a leading creator of game-based intellectual property" (added emphasis). This is something that hasn't really been done in the industry before, at least not as a developer's primary strategy. Instead of trying to out-Hollywood Hollywood or "outdo Pepsi or Coke with Espoo Cola or Helsinki Cola", Remedy is doing something different. While there are a lot of horror games, thriller as a genre hasn't been done very much in games. Also, while everybody else is doing larger cities, Remedy goes for a Twin Peaks style small village milieu (Myllyrinne mentions David Lynch and Stephen King as creative influences for Alan Wake). "As an industry, we're doing too much fantasy, too much sci-fi, too much horror […] to cater to the mainstream," Myllyrinne points out. "I do like some of the zombie games, but we've seen too much of that. If that creativity went to something else then that'd be great."

While one of Remedy's mottos is "smaller teams, larger games", Telltale Games is going in the opposite direction. Kevin Bruner says that he appreciates the freedom you get from creating smaller games. "Episodic gaming is an emerging market, which means there are less rules," he says. "This maps to what happens in the handheld market, where budgets and risk are a little lower. That's why I think there's more innovation in the handheld market." According to Bruner, episodic gaming also gives the consumer much more choice than traditional PC or console games. "It's pretty rare hear to anyone say, 'level 4 of Call of Duty is the best level [in the game], so I'm going to play just that one level.'" Telltale Games makes sure that all their episodes have a completely constructed narrative: a beginning, a middle and an end. There are no cliffhangers, and you can pick up any episode and get a good gameplay experience. Bruner says that if you're a fan political humor, you might want to pick up just the "Abe Lincoln Must Die" episode of Sam & Max. If you like the jokes but don't warm up to the game - great, you still got your money's worth. If you love the characters, you might want to pick up the whole season and patronize Telltale Games in the future. Max: By patronize you, he means we want to buy stuff from you, not mock you. We probably will mock you, but that's not what he meant.

Two small game development teams that work in different countries and very different niches of the market have offered us some very interesting insight into the present day and the future of the games industry. We at YouGamers would like to thank Remedy Entertainment and Telltale Games for their candid presentations, and look forward to their continued success. Another note of appreciation must go to the organizers of Nordic Game 2007, who brought a lot of gaming industry insiders under the same roof, and made this article possible.

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