So what's the key to staying innovative in the development world? According to Lasse Seppanen, production lead at Remedy Entertainment, it's all about staying small.
During this session at GDC, Seppanen talked about how the 31-person team at Remedy (Max Payne, Max Payne 2) has taken on its newest project, Alan Wake, coming out on PC and Xbox 360.
More after the jump.
He focused on what he called the "small and agile approach," meaning
Remedy is very exclusive in the hiring process, only giving positions to very qualified applicants with specific skill sets.
And Remedy has just one in-house development tool to work on Alan Wake. How can they do this? Well, they make use of middleware providers and outsource nearly all of the smaller development tasks, such as designing the game's vehicles. "We have one car in the game that was made by our modeler, and it's the worst car of the whole lot," Seppanen said.
Allowing the team of seasoned programmers to work on things they care about and giving the more mundane — albeit important — projects to outsourced programmers speeds development time and keeps innovation flowing, he says. And with such a small team, each member gets a development kit right on his or her desk.
The only thing not outsourced or brought in as middleware at Remedy is the in-game engine, which Seppanen said the company is not interested in licensing to anyone. Well, shucks.
