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Postmortem: The Collective's Anyone who has ever worked on a license-based game knows that such projects are invariably treacherous waters. Movies and television shows do not always translate easily into video games; thus many licenses are simply disappointing and uninspired attempts to cash in on the popularity of their source material. It is a challenge that has defeated many mortals. Could Dr. Jones vanquish the curse of the licensed game?
Before joining The Collective in October of 2000 I had worked on eight different titles, but only one of those was based on a license. That was Atlantis: Search for the Journal, developed by Zombie Studios as a movie tie-in and distributed in cereal boxes across the country. Although Zombie was a great place to work, we encountered a number of problems during the development of the game. After that experience I wasn't planning to jump right into another license-based project. But then The Collective offered me the position of Lead Programmer on an Xbox-exclusive survival-horror project which was to be based on a popular television show. The concept of the game was very interesting to me -- survival-horror is one of my favorite genres. So I accepted the offer and made the move to sunny Laguna Beach, CA. The Collective was formed in the late 1990s by Doug Hare, Richard Hare, and Gary Priest. They worked together at Virgin Interactive to produce Toonstruck and after that decided to start their own studio. These three privately own the studio and run the company: Doug handles high-level production and business affairs; Richard is the company's Creative Director; and Gary is the Tech Director. Prior to my arrival in October of 2000, the company had made a good name for itself with Star Trek: Deep Space 9. That game, which used a modified version the Unreal engine, received critical acclaim and established the company as a solid creator of licensed games. After that they began work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for which they created their own technology base.
When I arrived at The Collective, the entire company was in crunch mode. Most people were working on Buffy, with the exception of a couple developers dedicated to finishing the Macintosh port of Deep Space 9. Thus the team for the new project was mostly assembled from newcomers. We spent the first few weeks getting to know each other and developing ideas for the game. But after three months of working on the prototype, our project was canceled by the publisher. Some of us were added to the Buffy team and the rest worked on side projects for a while until LucasArts approached the company with the opportunity to create a game based on the Indiana Jones license. LucasArts had a few concrete goals for the game, but not a complete vision. Having been shown current builds of Buffy, they were very positive about the idea of using The Collective's existing fighting system and game engine, grafting on a healthy amount of exploration and adventure, and thus creating a game which would give the player the complete experience of being Indiana Jones. We were given a few directives as we began working on our pitch. The game was to be multiplatform - originally we were slated to develop the game for the PC, Xbox, PS2, and GameCube. It was also to be distributed internationally, meaning we had to consider localization issues from the outset of development. We were allowed to come up with our own story for the game but we were restricted by the necessity of not breaking the fourth wall, and of never violating what LucasArts felt to be the spirit of the Indiana Jones character. Although almost the entire company was trying to finish Buffy, a small, three-person Indy lead team was formed from the cancelled project's leads. The team was Brad Santos as Lead Designer, Brian Horton as Lead Artist, and me as Lead Programmer. Rick Watters would later join the project as producer. We scavenged help from the Buffy team and managed to complete a functional prototype within six months - one that impressed LucasArts and secured the deal. By mid-2001, we were in full production of the game. The original intended ship date for the project was late 2002. We ended up shipping the Xbox and PC versions in early 2003 and the PS2 version four months later. While the game was not as financially successful as we had all hoped, largely due to the delay of the PS2 SKU and almost nonexistent advertising, it is still an achievement of which we all are proud.
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Introduction
Features
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