GAME JOBS
Contents
Y Control: Joe Ybarra On Cheyenne Mountain's Massive Plans
 
 
Printer-Friendly VersionPrinter-Friendly Version
 
Latest Jobs
spacer View All     Post a Job     RSS spacer
 
June 7, 2013
 
Sledgehammer Games / Activision
Level Designer (Temporary)
 
High Moon / Activision
Senior Environment Artist
 
LeapFrog
Associate Producer
 
EA - Austin
Producer
 
Zindagi Games
Senior/Lead Online Multiplayer
 
Off Base Productions
Senior Front End Software Engineer
spacer
Latest Blogs
spacer View All     Post     RSS spacer
 
June 7, 2013
 
Tenets of Videodreams, Part 3: Musicality
 
Post Mortem: Minecraft Oakland
 
Free to Play: A Call for Games Lacking Challenge [1]
 
Cracking the Touchscreen Code [3]
 
10 Business Law and Tax Law Steps to Improve the Chance of Crowdfunding Success
spacer
About
spacer Editor-In-Chief:
Kris Graft
Blog Director:
Christian Nutt
Senior Contributing Editor:
Brandon Sheffield
News Editors:
Mike Rose, Kris Ligman
Editors-At-Large:
Leigh Alexander, Chris Morris
Advertising:
Jennifer Sulik
Recruitment:
Gina Gross
Education:
Gillian Crowley
 
Contact Gamasutra
 
Report a Problem
 
Submit News
 
Comment Guidelines
 
Blogging Guidelines
Sponsor
Features
  Y Control: Joe Ybarra On Cheyenne Mountain's Massive Plans
by Brandon Sheffield [Business/Marketing, Design, Production, Interview, PC, Hollywood, North America]
11 comments Share on Twitter Share on Facebook RSS
 
 
March 24, 2008 Article Start Previous Page 2 of 6 Next
 

How do you determine who should be hired, in that case? Because I haven't really heard of a lot of cases of hiring this massively, and company culture is really important, as far as any studio. If you're completely building it from scratch, how do you decide who to hire, and what the company culture is going to be?

JY: It begins with hiring the senior management team. When we initially started the company, of course the focus was on building the first studio, so the first wave of hires was the directors of the project. Our technical lead, our technical director, our head of the studio, et cetera. So, you just have to be patient, and you have to be willing to interview a lot of people.



And there are characteristics that I personally look for, in individuals that I want to bring onboard as managers, as leaders of our company. Like you said, part of our culture, if you will, is making sure you identify people that have the same belief system that you do; the same kind of ideas about things, and so on, and so forth.

But you also want to get a little bit of diversity into that as well. In our particular case, one of the things that I really looked for was experience. All of our folks, at least at director level, have at least ten years of experience in the industry. And because they come from many different companies -- we probably have somebody from just about every company that has ever built computer games -- that we get this diversity of viewpoint about how things get done, and, you know, certain values.

So, to go back to the culture question, a lot of what we have to do is just make sure that everybody's communicating with each other; they get on the same page about what we're trying to do. And it's working! I think that we have a really good culture. I like the culture of our company -- in the sense that we have enough diversity, as well as enough commonality, that it all works.

That's good. And there are multiple products coming out, right? On multiple platforms, eventually, with the Stargate license. Are you planning things other than Stargate, too?

JY: In terms of other product lines, you mean?

Yeah.

JY: Yes. In fact, Stargate, as an MMO, is the only large scale MMO that we are working on. We have another MMO that's under construction that's considerably less in scope, but nonetheless is still in that space.

But, another answer to your question is that all of our products will have online as their primary mechanism for delivery. And, in that regard, we don't focus entirely on MMOs. In fact, our second product is a completely different kind of a product. It's more of a peer-to-peer kind of an online activity. It's possible, like Stargate, that we can put it on console as well. But our primary focus is on the PC, and delivering online game experiences. All four of our studios build products in that space.

Have you thought much about the 'free to play' model, and what kind of business model are you going to go for?

JY: Yes, we have put a lot of thought into that. Yeah. And, it's my personal belief that it is ultimately where all the products go. Free-to-play, microtransaction business model, I think, is the winning solution, long-term.

 
Article Start Previous Page 2 of 6 Next
 
Top Stories

image
Gearbox's Randy Pitchford on games and gun violence
image
How Kinect's brute force strategy could make Xbox One a success
image
Microsoft's official stance on used games for Xbox One
image
Keeping the simulation dream alive
Comments

Anonymous
profile image
This product is most likely going to suffer the same fate as Tabula Rasa and Hellgate London. Stargate is a tired license with little global value beyond 40 year old American males. Ybarra's vision is flawed and behind the times to say the least.

Anonymous
profile image
I disagreed. Tabula Rasa and Hellgate London are products without an existing fan base to draw from. Stargate, as a franchise, is widely successful. The TV show, Stargate: SG1, was the longest running sci-fi series in US history (10 years). It has a global fan base, not just "40 year old American males." IF SGW fails, it will fail because the game is poorly done. With the caliber of people on that team I highly doubt that will be its fate.

Anonymous
profile image
Oh cool, a Cheyanne Mountain employee! Good luck guys. You are going to need it.

Anonymous
profile image
LMAO. Hardly an employee. But certainly not a closed-minded, failed wannabe game god like yourself. I always love when some bitter "40 year old American male" on Gama begins the comments with his insightful view (all negative) of the project discussed in a story. That same burned out, broken dreamed crybaby always foresees nothing but bad for the studio, its employees, and the game's community. Oh, and then that envious toad responds to any positive posts as "it's an employee." No, Sherlock. There are actual gamers/game devs who read this site and don't spew BS hate on every other game studio under an ANON tag.

Anonymous
profile image
I don't believe that this license is going to do much, if anything at all. It is tired and played out. Just like Star Trek, but worse.



It is extremely rare for a new studio to have it's first game be great (especially great enough to take on WOW or EVE or...). The odds are low on this one.

Anonymous
profile image
Yeah, at least Star Trek is getting a makeover before it's mmo will make it to market. Not even MacGuyver will save this one.

Anonymous
profile image
We shouldn't overrate licenses.



Star Wars Galaxies anyone?

Anonymous
profile image
This is a good license to build a great MMO with. But a good license does not a good MMO make. If the game is good, using this license will definitely help give it a jump-start.

Anonymous
profile image
The investors are going to lose their millions on this one.

Anonymous
profile image
wow. vitriol and more vitriol. it's like a lotta people never really mature into adults. just stuck emotionally as adolescents. at least wait and see what happens before piling on. easy to throw barbs and heap derision while hiding like a bunch of lil b'tchs. I'm building a new game and I hope everyone succeeds in theirs and all of the investors win. it will bring only more $$ to grease all of our wheels.

Anonymous
profile image
I had to post anonymously on this one, but time and time again, I've posted where ever I could that using Unreal as the basis for an MMO is reciepe for unseen problems and possibly disaster....



You see in order to get the Unreal "look" you have to maintain small "hallway" looking levels OR downgrade your graphical look OR go completly stylistic. At that point you really don't need to be using Unreal.



Unreal's material editor, it's material instructions and its "look" are tied together. You would need a high level filter to give the world a completly different feel and rewrite graphical instructions to get a new look aswell.



From my experience, level design wise, using the terrain editor it optimally maxes out at around 300m x 300m before you have to get streaming involved. Streaming and AI are whole other issue on the console I can only imagine what its going to be like online.



Another prime example and major hurdle these are going to be faced with is the issue of Itemization. Unreal uses "packages" and "archetypes" to manage its assets, however it does not support massive amounts of Items in any manageable method. Therefore the team is going to have to built a database that can manage, change, update and interface with Unreal's package system. The system will have to work backwards as well, updatea a package it updates the database.



Last but not least, making any object in Unreal and putting through their pipeline takes a long time...I don't see how they're going to build "Worlds" when just to get 8 hours of Console FPS gameplay can take 2 years. I can only imagine how long its going to take to make mmo "Worlds."



I for one, getting a stomache turning sensation everytime I hear that a new company is creating an MMO that is going to kill WOW, they really have to be kidding themselves. Blizzard is probably going to come out with StarCraft and its all over again.



Investors save your money and produce smaller scale games.

That's my 2 cents


none
 
Comment:
 




UBM Tech