Peak Me?
If I have a claim to fame in this industry, The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners is it. Over the years, it’s proven to be a well loved, high earning, and influential title. And by some weirdly lucky turn of events, I was its Project Director.
What does that mean (I hear everyone say, including other industry professionals)? At Skydance at least, it meant that I was essentially some parts Creative Director (though we had a great Creative Director) and some parts Senior Producer (though we had a great Senior Producer too), and I would pick and choose my work depending on what gaps needed filling the most. Above all, I was responsible for the team and the product, just as I had been on Archangel and Hellfire before. I heard one person liken the role to being a TV Showrunner, which from my limited knowledge of TV production, sounds like a reasonable analogy.
Design Tri-Force
When you have a hit game, naturally you want to analyze what it was that worked so well. As far as the design goes, I believe the key was in having three directors each with their own area of expertise, each championing aspects of the game that if left to just the other two, would have gone under-served. We had a Creative Director that drove the narrative, tone, mood, and story telling. We had a Game Director on a mission to create the most polished and most innovative combat systems VR had ever seen. And we had a Project Director (myself) who cared deeply about the “board game” rules that drove minute-to-minute decision making and goal setting.
Of course, all three of us cared about and contributed to every aspect of the design - narrative, combat, and structure - but having a designer who cared about each of these the most helped ensure the final product worked on every level.
A Slam Dunk?
You would think then, that we’d have high confidence in the game we were making. Well, I didn’t. For one thing, the history of the game’s production leading up to my involvement was not good (for reasons of tact, I won’t go into details). This meant we had to solve lots of peripheral problems before we could really make good progress on the game itself.
Then there was the classic issue of not having enough time left to make the game good. I remember we had hired professional reviewers to give us predictions on our review scores, and we received the results over the Thanksgiving holiday, just a few months before the game’s scheduled release. The predictions were not good.
And THEN there was the issue of all the bugs, constantly plaguing the game, right up to the Christmas holiday before launch (on the next January 23). I spent that entire holiday depressed about the game we were about to put out, convinced it was going to be an unfun buggy mess, and that my career in games was effectively over.
Achievement Unlocked
We know now how the story turned out, and thank goodness it was nothing like I feared. I returned from holiday only to find that the Technical Director had found and squashed a few key bugs that had been responsible for almost all of the game’s stability issues. We’d also, by this time (and in just a few months), found creative solutions to nearly all of the biggest criticisms from the Thanksgiving report. I remember David Ellison himself (founder, owner, and CEO of Skydance Media) congratulating me personally on the game - he had played it, completed it, and had had fun! Part of me didn’t believe it.
But the positive reviews kept coming in. I remember sitting at my desk when the IGN review dropped. We’d gotten a 9! I was speechless. I was the Project Director, the very first developer listed in the credits, for a game that IGN rated a 9! It made me emotional, frankly. And not just because we did so well, but that we did so with the odds entirely stacked against us. The game would go on to get more and more 8, 9, and 10 scores from many other outlets. It took us a while, but Skydance eventually realized - we had a hit on our hands.
Aftershocks
Since launch Skydance Interactive has done a lot of work supporting and growing the S&S product and brand. We released an free arcade “zombie horde mode” not too long after launch, called The Trial. Then in late 2021 we released a free post-game campaign called Remnants of the Reserve (aka Aftershocks). All the while, the game had been ported to PlayStation VR, PlayStation VR2, Quest, Quest 2, and other platforms.
With the game being so highly praised, made highly available, and continuously supported, it’s no surprise the game paid for itself, and all previous titles by Skydance Interactive. In January 2022, it was announced that we’d surpassed $60 million in revenue. For non-VR games, that’s a moderate success. But for VR, that’s a runaway smash hit.
So, is Saints & Sinners peak me? Who knows. I have a lot of fight left to be sure, but I’ll say this. If it IS my peak, what a glorious and wonderful peak to have reached!