The Tale Of Crossbream Studios is all too common

Filed in archive News on June 8, 2008

Image from Nintendo-revolution.blogspot.com

Nintendo blogger extraordinaire Falafelkid (who deserves that title just for this article, really, it's impressive!) tells the tale of Crossbeam Studios, a developer who received some press during the run up to the Nintendo Wii's release. After a long period of inactivity, Falafelkid has wrote a long article detailing the history of this ambitious startup.

Basically, we can break down Crossbeam in this manner:

Young, talented but inexperienced amatuers start a company to make a huge, AAA project, aka their "dream game," in this case, a game called "Orb."

For most companies in this situation, the endgame has already occured at this point. Even getting started is too daunting a task for most. However, Crossbeam proves a bit more determined, and actually does some stuff: they become an LLC (that is, a company registered by the state government they are based in, which costs real cash money), get a website going, and start making press releases.

Due to the determination of their founder, they get some press, even an interview with Nintendo of Europe. Excitement in the blogosphere builds. IGN.com lists them as a pro company.

Their game goes through a startling sea change: they suddenly decide to make it a Wii title, despite not having a dev kit or any console experience. At this point, they have a level or two built using a freeware 3D engine.

Any semblance of cohesion and progress melt down at this point. Progress reports become sketchy, and some of those bloggers that gave the company press begin to question what exactly is going on.

Finally, the goods are delivered: The studio is done, though they seem to be working on a smaller scale, PC project, which if true is exactly what they needed to be doing.

I myself am completely familiar with this chain of events. Because the sad truth is, from a commercial perspective, most creative endeavors fail. That sounds harsh, but one must understand that truth before going forward. When I was in the music business, I had a band that lasted about 4 years. We played gigs, released an album, and recorded another. Even though we actually produced real, tangible product as opposed to just promising it, we just couldn't get anyone to actually pay us any kind of amount for the music. So, eventually, despite all of our passion for the project, it just petered out.

The same thing happens in the game industry but on a much faster scale, because developing games is much, much harder than composing music (trust me on this!). I transitioned to the game industry from music, hoping to strike out as a freelance composer and sound designer with two other musician friends of mine. That didn't work (not enough jobs, too much competition, and not enough time- we had maybe a year to make it happen), so I then went to work in the "mod" community- doing music and sound for user created levels for such games as Command and Conquer: Generals and Baldur's Gate II. It was even hard finding no-pay "work" as a musician in the modding world, because so many other composers had the same idea as I had: do mods to build up your reputation!

While doing this, I ran across a company that was very much like Crossbeam. An ambitious, hard working young guy who didn't know how to scope projects (I don't think any young creative person understands scope well, myself included). I wanted to give him a shot, and started writing music for his project, but it became apparent that the whole thing was busted from the start. I called him on it, as nicely as I could, and that was it.

My story, though, has a happy ending. By doing a small, innocent little Baldur's Gate Mod (my contribution was a short musical track for a romance scene) I was introduced to an indie studio doing a commercial project. This studio, Planewalker Games, is the real deal. The two guys running the show, one a programming professor at a major university, knew what they were doing. They made their own engine and tools, and had extensive contacts within the RPG modding community- so in other words, they had a basis from which to start from.

But even then, it is such hard work. They are still working on their game, even after my part in it, music and sound, was finished. They started back in 2004, and it's four years later. Though I have to be careful (Non-disclosure agreements and such), that they have made tremendous progress, and the time they are taking are only related to the fact that, for the most part, it is two guys with day jobs working like crazy!

Anyway, I learned from that experience that I wanted to help develop games, not just make sounds for them, so here I am at the pre-eminent school for game development in America, the Guildhall at SMU. It's very hard work, but I love it, but you definitely learn to properly scope your projects, and you gain an appreciation for the massive effort required to make video games.

So to all those would be start ups- start small, develop something fun but manageable, and work hard. Learn from the mistakes of others, such as Crossbeam.

Read falafelkid's article here.