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Wideload's Seropian Talks Indie Game Freedom
simoniker writes "Wideload's Alex Seropian, who must recently finished wacky Xbox title Stubbs The Zombie, but also co-founded Bungie, has been chatting about how big-budget games are made, and noting: "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 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.'" Seropian now suggests using a small internal group to make games and staffing up with independent contractors when each project starts. Why aren't all games done like this?"
As long as the game design is done, then there's a pretty clear idea what sound effects are needed for things. Animations needed are also usually planned in advance and skeletons can be created quickly from the concept art. The model can be added later so that the animators can work throughout the dev process. Also, a lot of the bigger companies work on multiple projects at a time. While the modelers are doing work for one game, the animators are working on another.