HyperkineticStudios

Tomo: Chris! Intense question. When you are in the larger structures of big budget game development you are sheltered. You are a part of the machine and you need to focus on your responsibilities first and foremost. This is not in any way a condemnation, it is the natural by-product of scale. The smaller scale (and in this case, much more connected to the outside world) demands a wider view. What is the most important thing that needs to be addressed right now? It is the opposite of being sheltered. There is a balance of priorities that need to be considered (which I recommend you spend focused time in any given day analyzing, rather than stress about it all day.) In terms of the effects of being exposed to the shining light of the users? It’s amazing, and a significant difference in feeling. It’s like you spent your whole life having someone describe the world to you, then you started traveling. It’s opened our eyes and luckily reinforced many of our hopes about what it would be like to do this.

Hey, this is Rich! Thanks for the question :) After graduating from Georgetown University in DC with a degree in International Politics, I flew out to LA with dreams of getting into the game industry. I actually started out working as an IT guy, then worked in advertising for a bit. These were my video game industry equivalent of waiting tables. After about nine months of actively searching for opportunities and reaching out to people in the industry, I landed an interview with a company called Seven Studios in Los Angeles, and got the job. After about two years there, I moved over to Treyarch and became a game designer on Spider-man 2. From there, I was brought in about midway through Ultimate Spider-man to help implement its "open city" component, and then I worked for a bit on Spider-man 3, before moving on. About four years, in total.

Dave: My path was a normal one, for when I actually started out 14 years ago. I needed a job and a friend of mine was working in the QA department at Activision. I loved playing video games, so I figured getting paid to play them was a good fit! It actually turned out to be more work than that, but it allowed to find out more about the game industry, and I eventually got a shot at becoming a production tester over at Treyarch and that pretty much cemented my desire to stay on the production side of things.

Tomo: To answer “What is your general opinion on the gaming market right now?” I feel very hopeful and excited about interactive entertainment today. But to get more accuracy you’d have to identify “which gaming market?” Overall all that can easily be said is that things are growing. The numerous segments of the market differ on a number of axes. So much so that any given strategy may go from being practically impossible to an amazing idea that attracts support depending on the audience.

Rich: Figure that, if you have an office and are paying people industry-standard wages, each head on your team will cost about $12k per month, including salary, overhead, insurance, etc. Doing some math, if you have a AAA-sized team, that can run anywhere from 100+outsourcing to 2000-ish people. Throw in advertising and PR, which sometimes exceeds the cost of development, and you can see how it adds up. Even a modest game with 50-ish people that takes two years will cost $14.4 million to develop and maybe as much to advertise. Games ain't easy, and they ain't cheap to make. Even social and mobile games are super expensive, despite their smaller team sizes, since they have to buy users, worry about server costs, etc etc etc.

We chose the route we did (small-mid team, small-but-nice game that we can develop on an ongoing basis) because it suited our situation. If you're looking to make a game, definitely analyze your capabilities before starting out!

Tomo: We love Space Engineers. I am thankful for what they have, and cannot wait for what comes next.