Can Competitive Developers Collaborate?

The short answer is yes; competing developers can collaborate on singular projects but not without serious planning and taking into account the pros and cons to any working relationship between large teams. Now I’m not talking about situations where a project has been assigned to a developer and is instead shoveled over to another developer to be worked on where most of the creative process is either ignored or thrown out. We can leave that type of scenario to be messed up by majors and publishers. I’m talking about a focused development approach between large teams, Indies or even major developers towards a piece of technology, tech demonstration or even a game project.

There should probably be a reason behind thinking this way so bear with me here as I try to explain. As developers, we all share a common interest, games. Not just the development of games but the playing of them, especially games we didn’t necessarily have a hand in developing. We always want to see what the other guys/developers have been working on, whether for our own personal satisfaction for entertainment or for the inspiration to go beyond what was tried to achieve a higher goal…we want to play what the competition is making. We also share an innate desire to help each other’s development processes when given the opportunity. Alpha and beta testing for projects under development are good examples of this but can anyone honestly say, as a hypothetical, if given the chance to help in some way make a game better that you don’t have a direct hand in making but am hyped up over experiencing, would you not take it…no, of course you would. We want to help make each other’s games, so that we can play each other’s games and be inspired to make better games. A collaborative approach between developers seems feasible if not difficult as hell, with all the issues and trappings that can occur during the process it’s not a surprise why collaboration isn’t common practice.   

I had the fortunate opportunity at GDC this year to go to a panel titled “3 Years of Collaboration on Assassins Creed 3”. The development process for AC3 was overseen by Ubisoft Montreal but was heavily collaborated through four separate developers working together towards a singular goal, granted they were under the Ubisoft umbrella, but the process was not without the issues that competing developers would face during a collaborative process. First issue is logistics, each developer was located in a different region of the world, so not only was there language barriers to deal with but time zone discrepancies as well, it’s difficult to have a update meeting when half the staff is asleep. There are benefits to the time zone issue as a 24 hour work cycle could be achieved, when one team was getting done for the day another team was just starting, creating a very efficient work place that I’m sure Ubisoft was pleased with. Another issue that arose which might seem odd for a studio under the guise of a publisher is the desire for ownership. AC3 would not have the punch of a complete game without the naval feature, which was solely in the hands of Ubisoft Singapore, and though the Singapore studio has successful accomplishments on their own laurels, they still had a desire to hold a controlling stake in the feature that they worked on, but considering they were all getting wages and bonuses reflective of their work and in accordance with their contracts, ownership over their individual tasking would seem less necessary. Ultimately AC3 was a success, but can the same type of success be measured and achieved by many developers not supported by a major publisher paying the bills.

So let me pitch you an idea that sounds good in theory but has never been attempted in reality…yet. A collaboration between many developers towards a singular project with an expected 10-year development cycle, why 10 years, well what if the technology behind the singular project has never been created and the means to deliver the experience is not available with current generation hardware. With that much time available small teams can be segmented from the company at large to secretly work together on said project. The developer to come up with the idea would and should take primary ownership over the IP itself, but the technology behind it, the reason to collaborate in the first place, can and should be shared amongst all developing houses involved. Imagine what a developer could achieve given tech that was worked on by many, that boasts attributes never thought possible without having to pay for said technology.  Imagine the quality of games where one developer can accomplish in ten years, ten developers can accomplish in a year.

It might seem like a pipe dream in its current standing, perhaps the industry isn’t mature enough to work together on such a grand scale, but I’d like to think that if it were attempted our industry would surpass every other entertainment medium. That collaboration for creativity and technology evolves our industry into something beneficial for all.