Chicago-headquartered Wideload Games was founded in 2003 by Alex Seropian, ex-Bungie co-founder and Halo co-creator. Its released title to date has been the distinctly unconventional Xbox title Stubbs The Zombie, notable for its use of outsourcing in its development, and as described in a recent Game Developer magazine postmortem.
But
as for the physical location of the company, its studio is a cozy loft,
with hardwood floors, open spaces, and bicycles parked inside. Besides
the main work area, there’s an executive office (completely empty and
unused), a lounge, and a kitchen stocked with Red Bull and Guinness.
Gamasutra had a chance to speak to Wideload founder Alex Seropian about
a wide load of topics, with a particular emphasis on humor, and the
future of games.
So
what is Wideload working on next? “Some video games,” Seropian
laughs. “Some cool video games.” Further details below, including
development time-table, project market, and dark hints at platform.
Speaking Your Food Mind
Alexander
Seropian has done plenty of interviews, profiles, and press coverage,
he notes: “When somebody comes over and asks me questions, and there’s
something I want to say, I just say it. I don’t wait for the
question. [laughs] I write my own interview,” he tells us.
We
then inquire if Mr. Seropian has any cooking tips, or recipes he wishes
to pass on to our readers. “You’re probably just making fun of me for
that article that was in Wired.” “I
had all these philosophical conversations with that dude,” Seropian
explains. “He totally left all that stuff out of the article. I wrote
this little paper about how game design and cooking. They’re the same
thing. Not the same, but there are so many similarities between the
creative process of creating a meal and creating a game…”
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You are standing in a long hall. At the end of the hall is an elevator.
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“I
have this virtuous circle of life activities that I do outside of
work,” Seropian comments. “And it all starts with eating. Which is
just this really fabulous hobby I have. I just love to eat good food.
From that, I got into cooking. If you cook really well, your chances
of eating good food go up dramatically.” “And
then from that,” he says, “I started running. Because the more
calories you burn the more food you can eat. It’s really this virtuous
circle I got going. Those are pretty much my hobbies right there.
[laughs] I never wished that someone would ask me that question…but
now that you have.”
We
then ask if Mr. Seropian would do a cooking show on G4, possibly with
guests like Keita Takahashi rolling meatballs, or CliffyB microwaving
Hot Pockets. “Dude,” Seropian says with deadly seriousness, “I would
do that in a second.”
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Wideload Games has a door. And a reception desk, guarded by a skull.
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Differentiating Your Product
When
he’s not cooking, eating, or running, Seropian runs a game developer
that strives to be different. “There’s a couple things we set out from
the beginning, when I was writing the business plan,” Seropian says.
“I have always had the personal belief that, to be successful, you have
to be able to do something really well.”
“If
your end product is something that a lot of other people are doing,” he
argues, “You’ve got to differentiate yourself somehow. A lot of that
comes down to what the actual game is.” “So the only two bits of
‘strategy’ we cared about in our business plan were having some sort of
differentiator in our creative direction -- and for us, that’s humor,
because we think we’re funny. Which is suicide for a lot of people.
But that was what we wanted to do. And part of that is we like stuff
that’s funny. We like to try to be funny.”
“If you look at entertainment in general,” Seropian says, “People like
to laugh. Humor and comedy is big part of a lot of entertainment. If
you look at the top grossing movies of all time, it’s like split
between action movies and funny movies.... And
no one was making games that were funny. There were some, but nobody
really had that as a charter, so we wanted to adopt that as our war
cry.”
“And
the other thing was,” he adds, “how we were going to go about making
games. Really, the whole business plan was written by me questioning
whether I wanted to make games anymore. And the reason for that
question was my experience at Microsoft. Not
that it was a bad experience,” he adds quickly, “I had a great
experience at Microsoft. But being on the other side of the fence,
there were a lot of developers that were making games for the Xbox for
launch time, and a lot of them were struggling for one reason or
another.”
“A
lot of them were struggling with the transition from one project to
another,” Seropian remembers. “With the team size getting bigger... A
lot of them were struggling with trying to manage their finances, that
cashflow, because they were living under the milestone payment system.
And a lot of them were going out of business. And
I thought, 'Gee, if I weren’t doing this for a living, I’d think this
is totally a loser business to be in.’ Like, why the fuck do I want to
do that again? Let’s figure out a way to do it that’s not so painful.”
Seropian
isolated the big struggle for developers, including Bungie. “Every
time you make a game, it costs more money. And it takes more people.
And so you have to figure out how to have more money at the start of
every project. And not only that, if you’re doing one project at a
time, you’re basically putting all your eggs in one basket, making one
big bet, and hoping that it works.”
“What’s
the business model for that?” Seropian asks. “It’s like going to the
roulette table, time after time after time. And the minimum bet goes
up each time.” Seropian wanted to recreate the small feel of the
original Bungie, and find a model that would work.
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Alexander Seropian: game developer, culinary connoisseur,
and funnyman.
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Starting From A Core
Thus,
for his new company, Wideload, Seropian chose to use a small core
group, one that would be employed the entire time. Once they design a
game on paper, they’ll prototype the game, and do pre-production work
on it. Then, when they have the funding to put it into production,
Wideload will staff up with independent contractors (some work on-site,
but most remotely). For the last third of the project, the original
core will do all the post-production where they play test and tune the
game.
“So
that’s how we work,” Seropian says. “We’re a small team. We actually
design a lot of games on paper. We have these design parties, pretty
much every few months. We’ll get together and pitch them to each
other, poke them, riff on them, and all that kind of stuff. Last year
we probably designed thirty games that way.”
Seropian
thinks it’s healthy for the company to go through that creative process
regularly. “And it’s also the pool from which we bring the games that
we’re going to work on,” he adds. “We have a project that’s about to
go into production that will take fifteen months, maybe a little less.
We have a couple of smaller things that we’re working on. And then we
have a couple of other games that are in really early pre-production.
We’re just drawing pictures and stuff now, but those are probably
longer-term projects.”
Their first project, Stubbs,
took eighteen months to make, and Wideload learned a lot about what
works well, and what doesn’t. One thing that worked well was
contractors using the same tools as Wideload. “We set it up so that a
contactor can be doing their work in their house, or wherever they
were,” Seropian explains. “And when they sent us the e-mail that said,
‘we’re done’ we would just play the game, and it would be in there.”
With
this development process, the amount of time between submission and
review was zero. “We could look at it right away, and say, ‘Okay,
here’s what we need changed.’ Get that feedback to them immediately.
You want to get the iteration process as quick as possible,” Seropian
states. “And that worked really well for us after we figured out how
to make that happen.”
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Clothes Make the Zombie: The actual suit worn by Stubbs.
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On Stubbs' Life Lessons
Seropian had nothing but kind things to say about Stubbs’
publisher, Aspyr. “I love working with those guys. I really like
doing business with people that have the same goals as I do. And by
that I mean, Aspyr is a small publisher. Stubbs was a really big project to them. So Stubbs' importance to Aspyr was parallel to Stubbs' importance to us. Which is great.”
“Everyone
there cared so much about the game,” he says, “wanted the best for the
game, wanted it to do really well. So there really was a common pole
in the ground for us to rally around. It wasn’t like being one of
fifty titles coming out from some giant publisher who was going to tell
us we had to be done by some fiscal quarter... Aspyr
has some really good people; fun to work with, honest, and easy to talk
to. I could just go on and on. They were a great partner for us.”
Seropian
says the biggest contribution that Aspyr made to the game was its
soundtrack. “We didn’t have a huge marketing budget, obviously, but
they spent a lot of time and a lot of money on putting that soundtrack
together. I think that got a lot of press for the game. It was
mentioned in pretty much every review, right along all the other
aspects of the game, taken really seriously, and I think a lot of
people really liked it.”
Seropian
also referred to previous publishers. “Gathering [of Developers] is an
example of a company that [has] the same kind of goals that we do, and
a pretty good match for a company like us, or any independent developer
that wants to hold onto their IP. When
they started Gathering,” Seropian recalls, “They certainly did a lot of
things differently, which is part of what we’re about.”
Seropian
thinks it would be great for the industry if another Gathering, if
another developer-centric publisher came about. “Because, with all the
consolidation in the business, there’s a lot of leverage on the
publisher’s side of the table. From
one perspective,” he sees, “It’s good because concentrating that power
has the ability to make the profile of video gaming bigger. And as I’m
sure everyone who has a TV is aware that there’s a lot of things you
can put on your TV. Not just videogames. So there is definitely
competition for customers and eyeballs.”
“That
power can be harnessed for good,” he says, “But mostly it’s harnessed
for evil.” Having other options is always a good thing for independent
developers, he notes. “I
had some good times at Microsoft,” Seropian pauses, reflecting. “We
spent a lot of time and energy trying to separate ourselves from the
politics of the MGS and Microsoft proper politics.” One
of the most difficult times, Seropian recalls, was the E3 after Bungie
was acquired. “There was quite a bit of debate over what we should
be…they really wanted us to show a lot of stuff and be prominently
featured, and we didn’t want to do that. We sort of ended up in the middle, and that was the E3 where Halo
got the dig for having a crappy frame rate. People scratching their
heads, saying ‘This is supposed to be the big thing?’ Whatever: I
guess it all worked out.”
“Here’s
something cryptic,” interjects Seropian. “I’ve always been in the
business of making games for me.” He proceeds to outline his next
title, with impressionistic detail: “I’ve discovered recently that
I’ve gotten older. And I’ve got kids at home. And a family. And all
the friends I have now are parents of kids my kid’s age.”
“And
they don’t play videogames,” he continues to build. “So I discovered
there’s a lot of people like me -- who need to have something that
doesn’t necessarily have headshots -- but something that’s fun to play
socially. So we’re working on something like that.”
Emerging Trends For Games?
When
asked more wide-ranging questions on the future of the biz, Seropian
focuses in on episodic content. “Probably not for the reasons people
have been talking about episodic content for a while,” he says. With
television it makes sense, because a pilot will cost one-fifth of a
season. “But making one episode of a videogame is going to cost you
like seven-eighths. To me, it makes absolutely no sense from a risk
reduction perspective.” But
from a story-telling perspective… “I watch a lot of TV. I’m not
ashamed to admit it. And some of it I find really compelling.” He
cites the sense of anticipation, and wanting to see what’s next.
“One
of the things that I think is going to be really big in the next couple
years is the proliferation of closed networks,” predicts Seropian.
“Xbox Live is a closed network. iTunes is a closed network. I think
we’re going to get a lot more closed content networks.” Episodic
content is a driver for those kinds of networks, he notes, where users
keep going back to get content. “The
other thing I’ve been convinced of for a while, is that games are too
long and that they cost too much. It’s so hard for me to play a twenty
hour game, because I’ve got kids. But, kids go to bed, I go downstairs
for an hour, I play a game, no sweat.”
“And
if that costs $2.99,” he adds, “I’ll totally do that. And if it’s
awesome, I’ll do that like every week. All of us have way too many
choices where to spend our dollar,” he continues:“The only things that
are going to resonate with anybody is providing a better choice for
somebody. I don’t think episodic content will replace retail content,
or arcade content, but it definitely has a place.”
Seropian
further believes in a coming ‘perfect storm’ of features that will
attract a whole new wave to console gaming. “Part of it is HD
[high-definition], part of it is probably Blu-ray, part of it is
episodic content, part of it is arcade content, part of it is you can
play your music and pictures on there.” The
core gamer will expand a bit, followed by the casual gamer and the
mass-market gamer, Seropian predicts, “Especially if the price comes
down. Not just the consoles, but the content.”
Seropian
thinks that Nintendo is a great company, “with a consistently great
line of hardware and software products. Sony and Microsoft are on this
high crusade to own my living room, and be the sexy appliance of
choice, and do all this big, grandiose, visionary crap. And
it seems like Nintendo wants to make games, and make things fun. I
think they’ve been consistently getting rewarded for it.” Seropian
thinks they will continue to be rewarded.
When
asked whether Wideload is doing anything for new consoles, in
particular Nintendo's Wii, Seropian is delightfully obtuse: " Uh, I can
neither confirm nor deny. But we’re working on…this project is for, uh
targeted at, uh – ah, I can’t say anything. [laughs] It’s targeted at
a machine you plug into your TV."
If
Wideload wants to make things fun, and be rewarded, why aren’t they
making an MMO? Seropian quips, “I’ve never been good at following the
dollar band-wagon, you know?” So if we can’t expect an MMO, can we
expect another Stubbs game? “There will be another Stubbs in the future. Probably not the immediate future,” Seropian adds. “But Stubbs has more stories in him.”
Conclusion
“I’ve
been in this business fifteen years,” Seropian concludes by looking to
the future. “And I don’t think I’ve ever seen more opportunity than
right now. There are so many new markets opening up, so many new
devices around, so many news ways…” Seropian
thinks it is an excellent time to be independent. “If you got onto
Gamasutra’s Job Page, there are more people hiring than people
applying,” he adds, “There’s more channels of distribution and more
devices that need games, then there are games to put on them. It’s a
seller’s market, for sure.”
Thus, and concluding in all seriousness, Seropian grins: “Greatest time ever to be in games. Ever.”