We all by now know that ‘games’ is big, big business with huge budgets, development costs and high returns on investment [with the AAA titles at least]. Splash Damage’s Paul Wedgwood gave us rare insight into the grandeur of the development process of making a big title, in a multi-topic interview with GamesIndustryBiz.
When discussing being a British studio and the pressure faced, as we hear every other week of studio’s closing, Wedgwood said about Splash Damage, that they have always been “AAA or bust” and that “if you can go bust making boring, mediocre things, you might as well take the risk and go for something as brilliant as you can.”
Wedgwood explained that with titles, “Nobody ever remembers how much it took or how much it cost, just whether it was any good or not,” and game development costing tens of millions of dollars to develop and produce. He revealed that the Splash Damage studio have been to a quarry in Nevada with “50 or 60 automatic weapons and 21 microphones, just to get reference for the way that we design our audio.” [For Brink we hope]
The studio have rented famous Shepperton sound stage and even been over to Prague to hire a philharmonic orchestra. Wedgwood explained that games have changed so much, but fundamentally “are about interaction, so you need a whole of that kind of glitz and razzmatazz to be able to make something really compelling.”
“And I guess that’s part of what makes a game triple-A or blockbuster. But at the end of the day, if it’s rubbish it’s rubbish,” Wedgwood added.
It is amazing to get insight into just how ‘big’ studios go to bring us a AAA… amazing!
