If you were to ask Brian Farrell, CEO of THQ, what has been the downfall of many games, he might just smile and break into a conversation regarding trust issues. Making successful games is more than just putting together a skilled team of programmers, artists, and writers — it’s about synergism and reasonable expectations. Most of all, it involves a relationship between publishers and developers that revolves around mutual trust:
“You can’t rush the process,” he said of games development, but added that the publisher’s business acumen has tempered some temptations to take a ‘ready when it’s ready’ approach: “You know some guys that never finish a game. At some point, you need a closer. Someone who says it’s good enough to get a 90 percent rating, and not take another two years to get a 92 percent but it misses the window. That’s the art. The point I was making before. Developers are now starting to trust us.”
According to Brian, THQ has such a relationship with its developers. He points to Supreme Commander from Gas Powered Games as an example of how to do things the right way:
“We aren’t telling people like Chris that we need that product in Q4 of 2007. We say, ‘Chris, you tell us when it’s going to ship.’ We won’t put it in our plans until we have the visibility. Deliver a great game but don’t keep iterating until it’s dead. Get it right. When you get the developer’s trust, and they sit down with our guys and we talk about the critical things that need to be done, then they know it’s not about rushing it out. On the other hand, they know there is a market window that they don’t want to miss.”
Catch my thoughts on this, after the jump:
Sounds pretty reasonable, doesn’t it? It also sounds like something that might be a bit easier said than done. As a whole, gamers such as ourselves are not known for being the most patient slice of the general population, even if we have waited forever for some games to see the light of day. To the credit of developers, finding that elusive “sweet spot” of balancing resources and timing has to be utterly exhausting, not to mention terribly expensive. I’m pretty sure increasing pressure to get the product out the door in order to usher in that beloved return on investment has been the culprit behind many a failed game.
However, one need not look any further than EA Sports’ titles to see that cranking out games with “minor updates” to meet yearly deadlines is a viable option that can lead to profits. The problem is, not many developers have the massive resources that Electronic Arts has. Luckily for the developers dealing with THQ, they know at least somebody in the industry understands their plight, and is more interested in quality over quantity.
[Via Developmag.com]
