Currently at Saber Interactive, he says it’s also important to make the right game for the right budget.
At Gamescom, WCCFTech interviewed Tim Willits, who previously spent 23 years at id Software and is now the Chief Creative Officer at Saber Interactive. The team recently released Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, but that’s not what Willits told the site, he said that if you sew the jacket to the button, the clothing will be appropriately popular:
“I’ve seen all the cycles. I started in 1995, and I remember the death of the consoles; I remember the death of the PC. I remember that yes, there are always cycles, but good games and good teams will always succeed. One of the things that Saber has done well is that we have studios around the world and we focus on the right territories for our games. We focus on the right business for our games. Each of our studios has multiple projects, so we don’t have 200 people sitting around waiting for pre-production to be done. We’re very smart with our money, and we focus on the core aspects of the game. We focus on what’s really fun, whether it’s a $5 million game or a $10 million game or a $50 million game, it doesn’t matter.
But if that core game loop isn’t there, it’s not going to be successful, and we’ve done a good job of managing our teams, having teams around the world at different cost structures, and finding the most talented people. If you’re a world-class artist, you don’t have to be in California. Some teams, especially in North America, have 150-200 people. They pay everybody well. If your burn rate is a couple million dollars a month and you want to change an idea three months later, that’s like $6 million wasted. We can make a game for $6 million.
That’s one of the problems; you have these huge teams working on a game. If they want to iterate, it’s expensive. Every studio at Saber has a main team working on something, and it’s a natural ramp, and we have people experimenting with ideas, starting some really small projects. Maybe five people want to work on an idea, and they can change it, they iterate, they don’t spend millions of dollars. Once that idea is solid and we’re happy with it, after it’s gone through our reviews and our gates, then we put people on that project.
We also have a culture at Saber where anyone can work on any project. I’ve seen studios in North America where people are like I’m on the red team, I’m not going to work on the blue team. But here we’re all Team Saber. For example, we’re taking people off of Space Marine 2 because it’s coming out soon. Now those people are going to work on Jurassic Park Survival or Toxic Commando. That’s how we stay lean and make money. We don’t have ridiculously expensive budgets, so we don’t have to sell four million copies to be successful, you know what I mean? There are games in North America that if they don’t sell 4 to 6 million copies, they’re a failure. That is dangerous,” Willits said.
So does that mean they’re moving away from licensed IP (as Electronic Arts did) to cut royalty costs out of their budgets? Willits says that’s not the case: “Oh no, no. We’re working on a Jurassic Park game. That’s one of the biggest IPs in the world, and we have other things we’re working on that we haven’t announced yet. No, you have to manage how much money you spend on your team. You have to manage how your teams work. If you have the right brand, the right IP, it can really benefit you. Even we have had great success working with other IPs. Look at World War Z. I think the game made more money than the movie, I think, but I’m not sure. But you have to manage your teams and your business and make the right game with the right budget in the right part of the world. That’s what we’re good at.”
So he’s optimistic. The question is how the industry will take it…
Source: WCCFTech
