The Journey to Creating SHANK

[Music] my guess how many of you have read the shrink postmortem at the game developer magazine I'm trying not to repeat too much of that I think it's available to everybody so you guys can read that I really try to to get this talk around things that I didn't get to talk to about or things I found out after I've written that post-mortem so for people who don't know me very well or I've seen the work that we've done it's interesting that we've we've gone basically more and more violent over time and said you know we started with eats and it was family-friendly and then sugar rush was a game that was team and then we do the mature thing so I'm not really sure what we're gonna go to next but I think it's gonna be fun I'm pretty good at stabbing people now I think it's people seem to resonate with that for us that's good

you know I was presenting this branded slide and people kept asking me what what shank looked like when we first started and you know I thought you know it pretty much always looked the same and then I realized that there was this one test that I did with Jeff over over a weekend when we're first thinking about what shank was gonna be and so we built this thing and this is actually what shank looked like right from the beginning actually if I can just get the I wonder if this will work I want to show you guys the actual demo here try real quick and see if I can get there like right up here maybe I do it right at the end if I can but it was all done in flash and we didn't know where weekend and you can move her out but basically all the moves were the same if you kind of get a feel of how things were going and that's what gave us confidence to move forward and then you know a few weeks later we had a

new character design and it was basically shank and it was basically the same from then on and in fact so much so that what you saw here is in early January what you saw here was also in January and then the next thing I'm going to show you was in early March the two months later there's a double jump in there difference is that we had they look like [Music]

so in any case that was that was you know when I look back and I'm like what what did we do for the next year so but you know it was a lot of engine work there's a lot of tweaks as you know the animation was different over time you fix a lot of bugs we put it on three platforms all sorts of things but it was it's so pretty amazing that we got to that point in two months and it basically stayed the same I don't think I've ever worked on a game where it basically from a visual standpoint a fuel standpoint stayed the same after two months of development of course you know Monaco is gonna follow me so whatever whatever I did so some other really important things that happened to us is as PAX 2009 a lot of you guys have heard about that you know I wanted to show the picture of what really what was there we were talking to a lot of publishers at the time trying to get a deal done before shank is we really needed funding to finish the game because you know we're a team of six and

growing and we're doing other side jobs at the same time we really wanted to close roof and this thing and you know the publishers were telling us to not show shake and I think you guys have all heard this before this kind of thing where they're like oh I hate don't don't don't show your game out because that will hinder our efforts to promote your game of course in my experience they're kind of a multiplier in your own efforts so if you put in zero and they multiply on your zero and zero and that happened to us previously on each so we're like no you know we're just going to show the game we haven't even signed anything yet so it's ours to show by the same time we couldn't announce what platform so it's going to be on and again a lot of you guys have run into that so we just kind of made this box from Staples and spray-painted it and covered it up and news you know stuck whatever controllers in there that we could would including Atari you may be alone it's

already a Dreamcast but because we're and and actually it was a big hit because of that well partly because of that people really enjoyed that that kind of story so talking about some of the technically hard things right there on the right you can see our very first PlayStation image that we believe that was actually rendering anything that's examples shank so I took a picture of that and to see the prettiness that it was we shipped on the PlayStation 3 Simon ship with the Xbox but we didn't start Horning until February mid February and then we shipped in June so we had no code on the PlayStation and then we shipped in June so that was pretty fun it worked out well for us another thing was two gigabyte downloads I don't think I'd do that again there was one point four gigabytes of movies in that game so the rest of it was was a

game 600 big game and fragmentation I didn't I didn't I had no idea that I mean like logically thinking of course all the hard drives were fragment but I didn't think was going to be a problem we actually had problems up to where we have a magnitude of difference so one person would take 10 seconds to load the level and another person would take a minute to load the level and it was it was literally that bad and none of these certification caught that all our our internal testing EA's testing Microsoft's testing our external tests none of it caught it because they were all using fresh X boxes so you know if you're gonna do an explicit test the fragmentation thing and so that's what we learned and we had to fix that post launch and also took us a week and a half to fix it in a month to deploy the thing so that's another really annoying thing but it was it was it was a really bad experience for the people who had it we also almost went broke

while while making while making shank it was enough that you know we had to do temporary optional wage increases we paid back we paid all the wages back with interest so that was pretty awesome actually and it was kind of around that was a rep in in January 2010 where that happened who also had a shareholder loan to to tie things over a back loan against my house and Jeff's house and you know the reason one of the big reasons why we did it was because we felt like we had a risk not only did we want to get the best deal for ourselves but when we were negotiating the publishing deal you know just things just didn't feel right they were they were really it really felt like we're getting squeezed and I felt like even if I took the deal and it worked out for us it wouldn't bode well for the next person who came in after me and so the

deal I mean that were looking at just wasn't really it wasn't really right we would have survived with us about it so that's why we stepped away we said no because not only did I think that there wasn't a great idea for us but more importantly I really felt like we have a responsibility of a responsibility and our actions on how it affects the industry and so you know with with some contingencies in mind of what would happen if really went down you know that's when we took the bank loans and reduce the assets and everything they just said no to to the potion deal and went with ei instead that had a much more fair deal and I really do think that that affects the industry and everybody who does that affects the industry in quite a significant manner and in fact and so you know we're pretty proud that we were able to do that there's other random things that had

happened in there we built the levels in in PAX East LA last year we had this one great and it was the butcher level if you guys have played it and it was just really polished it worked out really well and it will also have the first level and we showed this to the press know like wow this is great and they're like when is it coming out in like summer is gonna come out in the summer I'm shipping in like three months but that was actually all the content we had we showed them everything so after that between March and June and we built the rest of the game which was 13 more levels so we had two levels and they would built 13 in three months and dishwashers halfway through the development we ahead of flood as well that was that was fantastic I was actually on vacation at the time by the first vacation in some time and I was in Hawaii actually and then I got a I got a call on their like your office is flooded like what do you

want me to do about it I'm not even there and this this picture here is actually the aftermath so the water was much higher than this before before someone actually ended up taking a picture what happened was the next-door neighbor's dishwasher had exploded and you know what's really interesting is I think I think we were protected or something was I mean we were just really really lucky because first of all a servers were in the other room that didn't get flooded so that was awesome and then the second thing is if you look maybe of course you can't see him cuz we lifted all the computers but the computers are actually all on the floor and the power supplies are on the bottom of the computer and then the water level went like three four inches or something that's what I heard anyway again I wasn't there but all the computers miraculously still work today and I honestly don't understand maybe

maybe it was you know we were trying to figure out what happened maybe there was like enough dust stuck in there that would protect it or something so you know thankfully we don't clean anything right I'm not sure anyway so so somehow we were we were you know there's an angel or something because otherwise that would have been some some big disaster I mean at least our servers weren't weren't affected anyway so it was good some other stuff here cinematix is one of the big big problems that we had because we had such big cash flow issues you know all the the cinematic team read the end this is mouth chart verses are and and you'll see you know this is some our storyboards and you see it just kind of gets more and more rough as time goes on Lots last one it's like what the hell is that you know and and so you know they were really meticulous at first you know directing everything and doing proper storyboards and then at the end was just like okay we just got it we'd have to animate now so so here's some scribble and then you go off and do

it yeah some post-launch data that I wasn't able to put out you know 30 percent of the people complete the game it took people around three or four hours for the first playthrough and and then they had the co-op mode and and stuff like that so obviously played into whether or not you you complete the game only 1% of people beat the hard mode 1.91 put six rather yeah our conversion rate is pretty good 26% and I think my next game I'm going to have a smaller download size well at least not one point four gigs and movies anyway actually even that was as we're developing it this the movies just kept peeking up and I would compress it some more and do other tricks to push it down and then the animators would go hey look more cinematics and then push it up and then I had to push it down or just kind of ball boulder alone and then we just finally squeaked by at one point nine

gigs kind of the oakum the last point is aggressive versus defensive players is another really interesting thing that we learned after launch which kind of shows that we didn't do enough testing before launch was that there's aggressive players and defensive players because you know I would get people with saying the controls are just the most amazing things ever this is just so sweet and then other people have like I'm stuck I don't know why I can't move and and we realized was because it was a different style of player so if you were really offensive and you wanted to kill people and stab thing which is what we wanted you to do it would feel really good because all the transitions were working really well and you just get into the into the groove of it really well but if you wanted to run and you wanted to you know just just get out of the the fight that was that was not something that we anticipated really so that's when the controls got sticky when it's like you know do a move and I want to run away that didn't work out so

well and we didn't realize that but you know it was definitely data point for us for the future on on things to think about you know just a different playstyles another thing is you know everybody asked me how the relationship between us and Yale is and you know I always couched that with with context which is that you know it works really well for us and sometimes it can work really well and sometimes obviously it doesn't work so well so I've got some stuff going on here and I wanted to start with the less good and then go to the good because you know well usually it's like good in the bad but people are interested in about the less good so you know we had we had a deadline that was two months before we really had to ship and that was some internal thing for me a that they really really wanted us to get it out at a certain time for other financial reasons that had nothing to do with the actual game so you know that was maybe maybe a month actually before we had to ship but anyway that extra

month would have you know been put to good use in terms of testing and tweaking so that was that was unfortunate and I think they understand that that was wasn't fortunate and I don't think they do that with us again anyway and the old-style PR was something that that I'm really passionate about is that you know the PR side of things in the old ways when they're doing the box product stuff you know they set up these these time slots that the media can can meet with you and it's like you know listen listen to us talk as opposed to you know talk to the media and I really think that it's important for us to to talk to the media and and actually have a conversation and have everybody understand where you're coming from and obviously as an indie that's that's one of our strengths but you know just as digital download continues to go that that I think is the way that it's going to go as opposed to you know this press release thing I mean press releases are horrible you might I

mean I just never really want to do a press release and I'm always against it pretty much but sometimes I get coaxed into it and we did a press release where Marian Krawczyk is uh it was announced that Mary Ann was our writer and and she actually wrote God of War as well and then she wrote she was shank and she had written shank like way back when we started with us right in the beginning and then when we did the press release of it and has said you know Marian Krawczyk signed to do shank right and uh the media rightfully so said why are you hiring a writer at the end of the project why are you doing that and the reason was because the press release was a one-way communication there was no way to talk back and say oh no way to have a discussion and say actually no no no we actually had her on write for beginning as she was involved but instead you know that just muses spread spread out that you know this is this game shank after signing with EA decided that they need a

story a high profile story writer which totally wasn't the case so anyway it's it's a it's a big rant I can probably go on for for quite some time with with a PR but kind of preaching to the choir here to consumer expectations you know signing with the publisher suddenly you're an EA game and that brings with it all sorts of other things it's just you know they have different expectations of what the game might be or might have or the features in might have and the length that might be and all that kind of thing and we definitely felt that from from everybody and that mean that's just something I have to keep in mind it's just it's just a thing that's there and of course there's a possibly reduced upside if you're not self funding it but I mean the fact is that we probably wouldn't have ship shank without some funding so you know it's not really something that that's on my mind the I mean the fact is that we we ended up keeping we kept the IP we kept the creative freedom here's a good stuff you know they really trusted us to

do what we wanted to do and and we just went and did it and you know part of the reason that that was possible is because we had created shank so far already I mean in two months it was basically the same game as the end and so nobody was gonna come in and say I want a different game than that although you know back in the day when I pitched eats you know we got like hey can you make it into a super monkey ball game and things like that so maybe maybe they did one trying to be I don't know machete or something and so we had other great things as true support I mean I felt like it was actually a supportive team as opposed to most of time I mean I've been working with publishers for a long time so a lot of times it can get to the point where the publisher has become a cost center for you rather than a support network for you and for us this specific time it was it was definitely a support network for us

because I guess the stars align I mean it was it was just a really great fit a multi-platform was was absolutely huge you know it's very very difficult if not impossible to do a multi-platform simultaneous ship without without a publisher they actually did do marketing which is you know pretty cool and they actually spent money on marketing which is a novelty you know reduce risk and less platform requirements I mean I didn't have to localize Schenck because you know I we knew that wasn't really going to make much of a difference in sales so you know we didn't localize it and right up to the last moment we're still changed tweaking text to make it you know a little bit better and we wouldn't we wouldn't have been able to do that if we were not with with a publisher so all good things and of course everyone asks you know how did we do well in the first 24 hours we sold more than eat such a down in his

lifetime so that's pretty awesome it was reported and I'm not you know I'm not privy to to talk about the actual sales numbers so here it is XBLA reported 41,000 units in the first week which is respectable and profitable for everyone but you know the main thing there is that though is that multi-platform was was key to our profitability it really was a difference for foreshank specifically it was the difference between profitable and not profitable so you know it's it was a really great thing to see and and on steam you know I think everybody here loved steam is just it just worked so well and it just it's got a really long tail and he's keeps on going as well so is an overview the we had prototyping for three months so we did tools forever so that we could actually build those 13 levels in three months the the demo that

you saw in two months was was really cobbled together with old tools and things like that and we couldn't have finished the game with that there was six months of just madness you know was one of the great things though is that the the the engineers actually built did such a great job during the first nine that's during the nine months the tools making is that they never had to I mean I think they worked three weekends throughout the whole project so that was pretty amazing and even though the weekends it's like one day out of it it was really the designers and the artists that got the crunch of it because of the the content crunch we're also working on an another project at the same time that we're doing shank and that really I really went awry trying to do two projects with not enough people and that was that was definitely one of the hardest times in my life you know listening to to the the meet mortem and talking about their stress levels and things like that for people who know me I essentially pretty hard to stress me

out but that was that was probably one of those most stressful times and having to go in the office and and just work it out and and not show how how stressed I was to the rest of the staff because you know that that affects everybody you know if your stress you just gonna permeate that with everybody so when everybody lis left and it was just me and Marcus who is my high school buddy who started the company with me he you know he'd stay late with me too to finish things into like 1 or 2 a.m. and I tell them you know I just I just don't know how we're gonna get this done like I just how's this gonna work and and you know we just we just kind of fought through it really and and I took a look at the risk yeah it was it was it was a pretty tough time it was around April of last year and I wanted to finish off with with some of the thoughts of the future which I've been thinking about a lot you know there's there's a whole wall of text here so I'm just gonna talk

about it here you know the the best breakout hits on on Xbox Live and PSN you know they made 10 million dollars which is like holy crap that's a lot of money but you know when you're talking about the number lower number of games you know the best games make ten million dollars or twenty million dollars whatever it is and the publishers look at that and they look at their investment into it and they look and all the whole economy looks at this and it's like you know the numbers just just not really adding up all that much and the ceilings pretty low but there's so much potential there that could work and I think the the platforms really need to well with it we've been talking about this forever try and they've been talking about it forever to improve the platform time over time which is create new ways to to to to you know micro transactions or subscription or better ways to find games and they need more and more things that's what they need and you need to continually improve that platform you know like like Steam and

iOS have and I think that that's how you're going to be to create this proper ecosystem and you know I think that one of the the flaws there actually is the King making you know the summer arcade frenzy is you know I mean if I got in summer I keep great I'm not gonna complain it's you know it is King making that's what it is right it's a huge boost but everything around it kind of falls to the side and you kind of got to do whatever you can to kind of pull yourself back up a little bit and you know I think that you know it's it's a it's definitely a double-edged sword it's a dangerous thing to rely so much on King making on all these promo where it's all focused on but like this two-week period you really need to be able to spread out so that there is you know everybody can win you know and and and then and we've been talking about it forever all of us have been talking to Microsoft and and PlayStation and they've been talking back and saying yes we know we need more we need recommendation systems literally about

five years ago they were talking to us about recommendation systems and and other ways to find games you know just like instead of top-selling game of all time you know top-selling last week last month last 3035 days whatever you know just more ways for people to four four four games to organically get found is the way that we're going to be able to actually have a proper system where where people can take risks and also have a much longer tail I mean it's when it shipped I think it made like $20,000 or something when it shipped and over time that's when we really started making the money so we were able to take that kind of risk we're saying okay we're going to launch this game and over a long period of time we can make late but actually on the console it's not so much it falls off a lot faster you know unless you're one of the top and so you really need to be able to find new ways of being able to to make money on it and you know free-to-play my connections

that's one you know steam style you know all the recommendation systems all the different ways to get people back you know it's a deal a week it's like the other day you know all that kind of thing you know it's it's it's all important things and you know the main thing there is just the abundance mentality you know it's not it's it's not trying to squeeze down it's it's like yeah steam understands that if your game is out on more platforms that will actually sell more on steam not less so you know this exclusivity thing doesn't actually help that I mean how helps hardware sales and I guess that's the motivation between it for it but if they if they want you know games to sell you know exclusivity isn't going to sell it in my opinion and encodes you know free codes it's just so easy right the other day I asked for 25,000 free codes on scheme I was like five minutes later here you go here's your twenty five thousand free codes of eats and you know that's it's just such a slow process when you're working in the

console anyway that's exactly 25 minutes so I guess I'm I'm done but I hope that was helpful some of you [Applause]