With the Hellboy project more then halfway complete Krome and Konami had decided to also release on the PSP. Because of my experience and skills as a designer I was promoted to be the design lead of this new title. This project marks the greatest challenge I have faced in my career. In the end I will have achieved many accomplishments and learned many lessons.

 

Design Challenges

The game as it existed on the next gen consoles couldn’t be ported verbatim to the PSP. So the first task was a near complete redesign of the game. The one goal handed down to me was that the story elements needed to be maintained as closely to the original as possible. This was easy enough. It meant that characters, enemies and levels would be kept thematically the same. The challenge was to redesign the gameplay to maintain the original games vision on a new platform.

 

I spent the first months of pre-peoduction working on this task. The fist step was to determine what wasn't going to work on the PSP. Essentially this was everything but still we had to create a list of tasks. I knew that simply saying redesign the game would create chaos. I also knew that a comprehensive list of tasks and goals was necessary to keep the team focused. This list would also allow us to create priorities and keep us moving towards the original games vision.

 

At the end of this redesign I had a new game. One that maintained the feel and story of the next gen project but was also its own separate entity. An entity that focused on taking advantage of the new platform. With approval from both Krome and Konami I was able to move on to production.

 

Leadership Challenges

The PSP project was not going to be created internally. Krome was committed 100% to the next gen project so it was decided to outsource the PSP project to a relatively new developer, Big Ant Studios. Big Ant was new to the industry with only one shipped title under their belt. Their studio was small but growing. The challenge for me was to work with a new studio and a very inexperienced design team.

 

This team was made of about 5 or so individuals with no industry experience led by a designer with almost no industry experience. I could fill a small book detailing all of the issues that I had to overcome to complete this project. But I'll keep things short.

 

My day to day tasks were spent keeping the design team and the studio on task. I would encounter push back on nearly all of the designs that I wanted to implement. For the most part this was because of the inexperience of the team. Though because of my abilities to articulate my ideas and impart my philosophies I was able to see the final design through to a finished product that stayed true to the original vision.

 

Even More Lessons Learned

Though I had experience leading teams when I was in QA and production it was during this time that I truly learned what I meant to be a leader. I learned what was needed to develop an idea and protect it trough the production process. I learned how to sell that idea to people and how to win over your team when I encountered push back. But just as importantly I learned how to take on others feed back. Not everything that I had created was perfect and even though my team was inexperienced they brought new ideas that I was happy to concede improved the original idea. I learned that the role of a design lead is to not only maintain your vision but to incorporate others ideas to make the design better than it was.

 

Random Side Note

Krome Studios is located in Brisbane and Big Ant Studios is in Melbourne. Over 1000 miles apart. For me that meant that I was making a 2000 mile round trip flight every week. So it goes without saying; I have some experience working with outside developers. I spent the majority of the development phase of the project living 3 to 4 days a week in hotels in another city so I could work with the team on site. It was both exhausting and invigorating. For a short while I was living that rock and roll developer life.

 

The Next Chapter

With the project complete from a design perspective and entering submission with publishers and TRC I felt it was the best time to start the next challenges is my career. I gave my thanks to Krome and returned to the US to join High Impact Games.