Through the Looking Glass

Want To Make Games? Here's 1 Hour Of Brutal Honesty From A Game Dev Legend (American McGee)

The production of high-end interactive media requires a delicate balance between artistic vision and rigid financial constraints.

• Large-scale game production, such as 'Alice: Madness Returns,' often relies on a core team of fewer than 10 stellar programmers to handle complex technical challenges like hair physics, while the remaining staff focuses on integration and cleanup.
• Production of 'Alice: Madness Returns' involved a total team of approximately 300 people, consisting of 100 internal studio staff and 200 external contractors dedicated to art asset production.
• Publishers may structure development deals to keep spending off their financial books by delaying the booking of costs until the moment a game is delivered and a bond is repaid, effectively making the development process invisible to shareholders during production.