Santa Monica, Los Angeles, California
Creator of Flower, flOw, and Cloud
For PS3, PSP, Windows, and Mac OS
Interviewed:
John Edwards Lead Engineer
310-991-9809
[email protected]
FOUNDATION OF THATGAMECOMPANY
-they were directly mentored by mainstream companies
-started out in God of War studios which influenced and taught them
about new environments and features.
-started out in the Indie Community
-Part of the genesis of the company was digital distributors
-When the Mainstream Media was down, smaller companies and newer
ideas had a better chance to be introduced.
-Thatgamecompany was founded in the Spring of 2006 by Jenova Chen
and Kellee Santiago, two graduates of the University Southern California
Interactive Media MFA program. They had worked on several projects
together, including the multi-award winning student game, “Cloud,” and
decided to continue working together on small, experimental games by
forming a game studio that would focus on these projects.
- At TGC (Thatgamecompany) their goal is to make commercial video
games that communicate different emotional experiences the current video
game market is not offering. They encourage innovation and
experimentation and believe that their creative games will appeal to new,
yet untapped, audiences.
MANAGEMENT
- big team is too much for management -Thatgamecompany is a small, private company
-organization can be iffy <- sometimes you have to be holding on to the edge of your seat.
-they like meeting smart people that can be relied on when hard work is done.
They supervise themselves and each other. They remind each other about scheduled tasks.
They have zero management. Their responsibilities are: figuring out ways to handle peoples
visions to match the financial and time budget, or finding more time if they feel very strong
about a vision. -you can't expect that your ideas won't be scrutinized. People will tell you their
opinions. -another responsibility is knowing that your ideas will affect every other of the 10
workers in the company. Your responsibility is to make sure that your ideas will affect their
work in a positive way. Everyone wants to have some aspect of the designer position. How
important and meaningful your idea is vs. how disruptive and conflicting it is on the other
people. -"Sometimes you have to bite the bullet and accept it“ -collaboration does put
philosophy on a strain.
LIFESTYLE
-The life of a programmer is hardcore. companies try to keep it mellow sometimes. it's an
intense lifestyle and the gaming industry is notorious for something known as crunching (which
means forcing people to work over hours and wearing people out which villainized the
industry. –Thatgamecompany is not strict about crunching or enforcing an over 45 hour work
week. - On weekends they have parties that they call 'Jams' in which they play with their games,
tools, and side projects; ignoring schedules and just having fun with their work.
-doing things that are relevant to the current game project <- freedom & ideas are released
then. -small projects for Steam, PSN, and PSP can provide living wage -Flower took 2 years to
make and just enough copies were sold to satisfy the worth of their release.
Kelley Santiago, Jenova Chen
(thatgamecompany) and Phil Fish liquor up
before the 2008 IGF and Game Developer
Choice Awards ceremony started
- they believe in the notion of quick development
-they are very passionate about games and exclusively just avid gamers
- They do a lot of philosophical arguments and conflicting feelings on
what games should be about <- just wanting to give it more value to the
player. -Their ideas are directly influenced by mainstream games, but
they focus more on the philosophical aspect, introducing new meanings
and feelings in a game. -Games: emotionally relevant <- short games are
good for their budget and respect the player's time <- they want to leave
the player with something -Strive for perfection while being
philosophical and exploring new things. Everything in a game needs to
be relevant <- needs meaning. -"Fun" is not always necessary
EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATIONS
-They work with people who inspire and like challenges
-Lots of people take games seriously, but they are more focused on people who are multi
disciplinary, having multiple skills like being and engineer and an artist at the same time (old
school hierarchy)
-they hire people for every position who are either good at graphic art or programming
games. -they look for people who have gone far beyond the call of duty -be able to make ideas
happen if they have the necessary skills
-look for history of producing stuff, focusing on portfolios, people who have made game art
etc. -chain mailing the company will get you barred because they will perceive it as a spam. they get tonnes of resumes. for each position they have several tests. resumes just get the
company interested and the tests verify an employee's qualification. -their hiring technique
was taken from the advice of mainstream game companies. -experience is the best way to
learn and John Edwards agreed with me that experience is a better teacher than
institutionalized education systems. He said he didn't even need a Computer Science Degree
to become a Videogame Programmer. They don't focus so much on courses but in America,
they are interested in high SAT scores (from the "Suck Ass Test"). -people are very
impressionable when they come out of school and one of their goals is to avoid that. -Seeing
for yourself is the best way to learn. individuality is respected, their company has a noncorporate ideology (it's not one of those "put on a uniform and wear a painted on smile while
you count someone else's money" kind of job. The gaming industry highly values
individuality and creativity. It's a very philosophical industry with no ideological barriers
like my above example.