U2 Development

Did anyone watch the development movies on the Uncharted 2 disc? There were a few things on there that really surprised me, like their description of no producers and no meetings. I'm really curious about their hiring practices since the approach sounds like it would be difficult to maintain, especially if they needed to grow rapidly.

When I was digging around the web yesterday, I found an article with some interesting quotes from the game's co-design lead:

"We have about 100 people in-house. We did scale up a little bit by using excellent contractors who came in as we got to the end of the project. But the team was not that much bigger. It’s a testament to how hard the team worked. It’s critically important to work as a team. You can achieve so much more than people who are pulling in different directions. We don’t have anyone who has the title of producer. We definitely have people who are de facto producers, but the team is really self-producing."

It makes me very curious about the feel there.

"When you make something that is of high quality, there is automatically a greater market for it. We are motivated by a desire to make something really fantastic, something that we love. It might be idealistic of me, in my personal opinion, but in the arts, I think that translates into sales."

<3

"It also was an active cinematic experience. [snip] You don’t lose control as Nathan moves around the floor of this collapsing building. We only take control away very briefly, as in the middle of an explosion, and the player doesn’t notice. Things happen around you as we knock Nathan on his ass and put him in one life-threatening situation after another. That’s a compelling experience and the promise of video games."

This is the key to making third person as "cinematic" as an FPS, in my opinion. Never remove control from the player, if possible.