In our continuing tour of Chicago-area game development studios, Gamasutra had a chance to visit Wideload Games (
Stubbs the Zombie) and talk to former Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian on episodic games, outsourcing, and escaping big-company politics.
Seropian has some particularly interesting opinions on episodic gaming, noting:
"When asked more wide-ranging questions on the future of the biz, Seropian focuses in on episodic content. “Probably not for the reasons people have been talking about episodic content for a while,” he says. With television it makes sense, because a pilot will cost one-fifth of a season. “But making one episode of a videogame is going to cost you like seven-eighths. To me, it makes absolutely no sense from a risk reduction perspective.”"
In addition, Seropian discusses his history with Bungie and Microsoft in a fascinating section:
"Having other options is always a good thing for independent developers, he notes. “I had some good times at Microsoft,” Seropian pauses, reflecting. “We spent a lot of time and energy trying to separate ourselves from the politics of the MGS and Microsoft proper politics.” One of the most difficult times, Seropian recalls, was the E3 after Bungie was acquired. “There was quite a bit of debate over what we should be…they really wanted us to show a lot of stuff and be prominently featured, and we didn’t want to do that. We sort of ended up in the middle, and that was the E3 where Halo got the dig for having a crappy frame rate. People scratching their heads, saying ‘This is supposed to be the big thing?’ Whatever: I guess it all worked out.”"
You can now
read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject, including plenty more intriguing commentary from Seropian (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from external websites).
