Feature: 'Stubbs The Zombie Postmortem'

In this exclusive and fascinating postmortem reprinted from Game Developer magazine, Wideload founder Alex Seropian explains frankly how his team built Stubbs The Zombie for Xbox with the Halo engine, a core team, and an innovative production model. In his introduction, Seropian explains his relatively radical manifesto: "Three years ago, after leaving the helm at Bungie I found myself without a job and on the sidelines of the game industry. It was weird. After spending six months tooling around at home, I realized I had to get out of the house and do something—be productive, set an example for my kids, take over the world—that kind of thing. Games are what I know and love, but I faced a real dilemma in trying to figure out how to get back to making games on my own terms. To be an independent developer in the current climate of publisher consolidation and rising costs seemed impossible, but somehow Wideload was created. I challenged myself to create a company with a set of commandments essential to my personal and professional happiness. The Commandments: * First Commandment: We shall establish our game’s creative direction. * Second commandment: We shall own our intellectual property. * Third commandment: We shall not let a third party determine our success, such as the publisher who’s doing (or not doing) the marketing, or the funding source (likely a publisher) making demands that are not in-line with our goals. * Fourth Commandment: We shall have a small manageable team. We don’t want 50 employees making one game over three years in house (we want low overhead), and we don’t want to suffer the churn of ramping up and down for projects." You can now read the full Gamasutra feature on the subject for much more on Seropian's independent thinking, and how his concepts worked out while developing Stubbs (no registration required).