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Developers have to consider turning new IP into a franchise even when games are nothing more than ideas, APB’s Dave Jones has said.
Speaking to VideoGamer.com at the Brighton Develop conference, the Realtime Worlds creative director said that developers “have to think of so much these days”, even at the early concept stage.
He said: “It’s not just the game, it’s how do you turn it into a franchise? Where do you go after one? What does two look like? Is there enough scope to turn this into a franchise? Those kind of thoughts you have to have right away.”
Jones said that because of this situation a case like Lemmings, which “came together probably in an hour” based on a short animation, wouldn’t be possible today.
Jones personally wrote the hugely successful puzzle game Lemmings while at DMA Design, the studio that eventually became Rockstar North. He also created the Grand Theft Auto series.
Jones revealed that if he gets an idea for a game, he typically spends up to a year mulling it over in his mind without mentioning it to anyone.
“For me, if I get an idea for a game, typically I tend to in my mind, I work with it, I mull it over, I go through things, typically for six months to a year.
“If I’ve given up after three months, it’s just like an internal test for me. If I’m not keeping revisiting that and trying to put more flesh on the idea and thinking how will this work, how will that work? It’s a great test for me, because if after two or three months I let it drop I know it’s not going anywhere.
“But after six months or 12 months it’s still there, it’s still eating away at me, and I keep saying I can solve this, I can solve that, that’ll work – then typically that’s how long it takes. I have to incubate an idea.”
Be sure to check out the rest of the revealing interview, where Jones dishes the dirt on his design philosophies and the development of APB.
