Sean Valesco, lead designer of a boy and his blob for the Wii, wrote up a four-page piece for GamaSutra discussing what went right and what went wrong with the project. The title was WayForward’s first boxed game for the Wii, which itself caused trouble – their tools and workflows weren’t set up to handle such a major undertaking, and poor coordination of outsourced teams caused delays. At the same time, trying not to think too big worked to their advantage – a small team kept bureaucratic nonsense out of the equation and forced individual team members to be strong. A small team also helped ensure a common vision of the end product. Interestingly enough, the decision to release the game as a boxed title rather than WiiWare was the biggest turnoff for me, as a consumer. For me, this changed the game from a release-date-buy to a whenever-I-get-around-to-it title. The whole article is worth a read, full of insight into the process of developing such a game, and seems potentially useful to anyone just getting started in video game development.
