What Went Right?

Partnership – In Sega we found a great mixture of friends and people that we have worked with for many years in our careers. Additionally, it helped to have our publisher only 20 minutes up the road. While we probably didn’t take advantage of that enough, it was always an option. The team in Budapest was also a team we have worked with in the past. Since this was their first PSP project there were many things that could have gone wrong but they dealt with many of the curve balls that were thrown at them. Their availability, talent level and cost effectiveness really helped make the project possible.

Budget – Predicting the budget was a difficult task. In essence, we were asked to give and schedule a budget that was based off of source code that we had not seen yet. By the end of the project, our budget was only 13% higher than our original guess and this was due to circumstances out of our control. This was not a game where we were going to make any money and in fact would take a small loss. But in the end it was worth it to put out a solid game and add to the legacy of Crazy Taxi.

Staffing – Like the budget issue, it was difficult to predict what team size we would need to develop the game without being able to see what the source code entailed. This was a game that was not built for multiplayer and the complexity of the squeezing these features in proved to be no small task. However, the lead programmers at Sniper have nearly 20 years of experience each. With occasional contracted support, our staff size proved to be the right size.

Design – We all agreed that doing a direct port would not be enough to even satisfy the most hardcore Crazy Taxi fan. Throwing in Crazy Taxi 2 definitely made it seem better but still not taking advantage of the new platform. Adding a single player campaign was very intriguing but it would have taken even more time and money to develop balance and tune. Multiplayer seemed like a big challenge but worth it for the player. The final piece of the puzzle was the custom music player so that fans could bring in all of their favorite songs.

Testing – Both the Sega of America and the Sega of Europe test teams did a phenomenal job. In general they would run “around the clock” teams so there always seemed to be coverage on the project going on. With the different time zones to manage on this project, it could have been a limiting factor and even caused some delays. But due to the constant coverage we received quick and accurate information about our bugs with very few exceptions.