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Bonsai Barber's Hollis: 'Band' Development Preferable to 'Conducting'
by Staff, Simon Parkin
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August 14, 2009
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Talking to Gamasutra in a larger feature, GoldenEye 007 and Bonsai Barber co-creator Martin Hollis has suggested, when it comes to game creation, "I'd rather have a band than an orchestra", emphasizing collaboration, rather than direction to make great games.
When it was put to Hollis that Warhammer Online's Paul Barnett thinks of the teams who make games as kind of like bands, with a core set of four or five musicians who give the music its character, Hollis noted:
"I use the band metaphor, too, yeah. I'd rather have a band than an orchestra. I prefer not to be a conductor. I'd rather get to be in with the musical instruments."
The UK industry veteran added: "You know, very often, somebody does have to say, "This is how it's going to be," otherwise it becomes difficult to make progress.
On the other side of the coin, I see design as an intelligent search for the best solution. Why isn't it that other people are going to be able to find the right answers if you can communicate the problem?"
On a related note, Gamasutra also asked Hollis who he thought the 'geniuses' working in the game industry today were, and he explained:
"I cannot tell from simple reason that I don't know necessarily who's really in charge of making a game turn out the way it has. And I don't believe too much in the auteur theory of games making.
I believe very strongly in the group, so I can talk about what groups are working really well at the moment. Can you call a group a genius? If you can, then... Except for the case of indie games where in a lot of cases, it's pretty clearly one person."
As part of the larger Gamasutra interview, available now, Hollis then singled out a couple of unique indie titles in that vein, naming random-infused 2D platform game Spelunky and super-involved Roguelike Dwarf Fortress.
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A small team can (and should) act like a band (or a string quartet, for what matters) but a big group of 100+ players do a need a conductor (and tha's the reason why the figure of the "conductor" developed in the first place).
The point is the conductor must be good, or the performance will clearly be a mess with sinchronization and communication problems between the different sections (like artists/programmers ;) )