Nintendo Okie

Does anyone else get frightened when development studios are hit with staffing changes?  When it happens my initial reaction is that the game will suffer.  Truthfully it can end up being a good thing just as easily.  Changing devs could mean that lots of knowledge of the inner workings of the game mechanics and story could be lost, but it also means that new ideas and perspectives can be brought in as well.  Is that always worth the trade though? 

Jason West and Vince Zampella (the former “big wheels” at Infinity Ward) just recently announced the creation of their new studio, Respawn Entertainment.  It is rumored that several other employees of Infinity Ward will jump the Activision ship and set sail to join Respawn.  With the track record that West and Zampella have, there is no doubt that Respawn’s first game will be very successful, especially if they end up with some of the talent of the current Infinity Ward staff.  What I have been thinking about is what will Infinity Ward’s next game be like?  No doubt that there are many skilled individuals at IW, but how many key members does a studio have to lose before their products start to suffer?  Hopefully both studios will produce great games and we will just have more to play. 

A similar thing happened at Retro Studios a while back.  Mark Pacini, Todd Keller and Jack Mathews (former design director, art director and principal technology engineer) up and left Retro with no warning at all.  The rumor was that they were unhappy with the direction Nintendo was keeping them on.  This news hit me pretty hard being the huge Metroid fan I am.  I was so scared that the future of Metroid had beem compromised.  The three have since formed Armature Studio and as far as I know, they have not made any announcements about any projects they are working on.  Meanwhile, Retro went on to produce the Prime Trilogy collection.  The collection included great ports of the GameCube Prime games, but will Retro maintain the same level of quality when they have to produce all new assets for their next game?  I have no doubt they will but I can’t help but wonder if the change in leadership will cause a few bumps in the road.  Meanwhile, Metroid has been handed to Team Ninja for the moment.  Talk about a change in development. 

I remember I was terrified when I heard that Super Smash Bros. Brawl was not being developed by Hal Laboratories.  I was relieved to know that series creator Masahiro Sakurai was still in charge of development but I was worried that still wouldn’t be enough.  As time passed, I read some interviews and learned that Sora Ltd. was the name of the development studio behind Brawl.  My heart stopped when I learned that the studio only employed four people at that time.  “How on Earth can four people make Smash,” I thought to myself.  It turned out that this is a common thing, and that studios will employ more people during development of a game.  Thankfully, a dev team was pretty much handpicked for Brawl and the game shined brightly for it.  Brawl stands as the finest product every produced by Nintendo in my opinion.  I still have to wonder if things would have turned out the same way if Masahiro Sakurai wouldn’t have been involved.  I remember Satoru Iwata stating that without Sakurai, Brawl would have not existed. 

Honestly, I think I am making too big a deal out of this.  There have been times when game sequels suffer from developer changes, but all of those typically deal with the franchise being handed to a new developer.  I suppose that is the difference between changing out a few people verses a whole team.  I don’t want to think that a handful of people leaving a studio can affect the quality of a game, but when the division leaders change, it does worry me a bit.