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Remedy Interview - Part 1: "Life After Success"

Remedy Interview - Part 1: "Life After Success"

YouGamers: Hello guys! To get things going nice and easy, let's start with a very common question - could you please fill us all in on who you are and what your responsibilities are at Remedy?

Järvilehto: I’m Petri Järvilehto and I’m the Creative Director at Remedy; I’ve been with the company right from the start….been here for, what, 12 years now? [looks at Markus who smiles and laughs back] Worked on Death Rally originally then as the project leader, Max Payne, lead game designer on Max Payne 2 – now in charge of the creative side of Alan Wake.

Mäki: My name’s Markus Mäki – I’m also one of the original founders of Remedy; been also here for about twelve years. I was the project lead for Max Payne 2 and now I’m the project lead on Alan Wake.

YouGamers: Most people won’t perhaps know this but you guys started off in very humble surroundings (in someone's' cellar) and things were probably a lot different back then compared to as they are now. How was it to start off with a team of guys who had never been developing games before, crammed in a tiny place with no windows?

Järvilehto: Windows are highly over-rated! Back then we were all young and very fanatic about getting to work on games; just being able to build you own first game and actually have it ship, and see it in retail stores was totally awesome. You’d go “Woah! I made that!” and things were very different, but working on games was highly satisfying back then. We were all driven…obsessed…and that kind of energy and craziness in your 20s – there’s some magic that goes with that as well…

[pauses]

...I’m glad that we’re not in the basement anymore [nods wisely as everyone else laughs]

YouGamers: During the very beginning of your life as a game developer, did you ever have any of those "enough is enough" moments and thought about becoming a florist instead?

Mäki: I think every job has occasional moments like that but I think on the overall, this is pretty fun and we have a really good team that’s fun to work with...

Järvilehto: …we now have a fantastic history of working with the same people for 10 years now…

Mäki: …although this is challenging, I don’t think we’d be wanting to arrange flowers or anything else!

YouGamers: Your first game “Death Rally” was a really nice 2D game…

Mäki: 2.5! [laughs]

YouGamers: Didn’t you add the 3D aspects some time after making the 2D part, because everyone else was doing 3D?

Järvilehto: Not really – Death Rally started as a 2.5D game where we basically had a backdrop bitmap and a bunch of 3D objects on top of that. It was an easy solution to making a good top-down racer…

Mäki: Yeah, it definitely brought new depth to the game but those 3D elements were in the game from the very first prototypes.

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