This year’s a big one for FPS with enormously protracted development times from Ex-Soviet Nations. Clearly, there’s Ukraine’s STALKER, but Russia’s TimeShift had a similar lengthy trip from conception to completion, including Multiple Publishers and going back to the drawing board after it was completed back in 2006. What happened? Saber’s Andrey Iones talks about it all in a lengthy Gamasutra interview.
“In Russia, you can’t find people like designers and producers. They simply don’t exist, because there are no triple-A titles coming out of Russia. It’s simply a challenge. You have to bring these people in, and you have to train them so that they become triple-A developers. It’s much more than programming, because you have to have people with production skills and with designer skills. It’s really hard to come by those in Russia.”
Which is something I’ve heard off several Russian developers – that while the more technological people are fine, the actual designers are so thin on the ground due to a lack of a cultural history. Anyway, I suspect they’ll be some more about TimeShift in the next couple of weeks, when Alec’s review for Gamer comes online. He quite liked it. The Tennis is quite good.
