do not making a game. Staff enthusiasm and attitude are equally important. And surely, at a high-end PC studio like The Creative Assembly, developers would be less than enthused by embracing mobile development? While much of the team working on Total
War Battleswere hired in from elsewhere, some of the existing The Creative Assembly workforce joined the product. The reaction of those staff, and the wider team working on CA’s console and PC projects, was one that highlighted a turning point in industry attitudes towards iOS. “There is a change of attitude
everywhere,” he insists. “What I have seen is that developers, including myself, now see things like the iPad as a console. It is a console in terms of working with the device. I have worked on high-end PC games and console games, and from a working perspective now the game is finished, I can say it is a console. “It is a fixed hardware so you know exactly
what you have. In fact, unlike the PC’s Total War is of course famous for, the iPad is more like a console, because you don’t have adapt it to fit so very many cheaper or less powerful models. It was a lot like console development.”
POSITIVE ATTITUDE For the mobile team, the optimism doesn’t stop at their feelings about the iOS hardware itself. For Charpentier and his co-workers, the fast paced, dynamic nature of the mobile
sector makes for a refreshing change to the world of triple-A console development. “I feel personally that the main console business is a bit – I almost want to say stagnant,” admits Charpentier. “There isn’t enough change in that area, in part because of the console releases. Everything about those games and the way people develop them doesn’t change for even ten years.” Over in the triple-A mobile space, things
are very different. Hardware updates are so frequent the platforms are almost in a state of flux. Monetisation models adapt, and the gold rush keeps everyone motivated. For Charpentier, it is reminiscent of the console era when 3D arrived and gaming audiences exploded; a time of excitement and optimism. As a result, he’s clearly greatly inspired by
a working atmosphere alien to many since the early 1990s. “One thing that can get very tiring is
working with monstrously big teams,” he says. “If you are on a huge team, whoever you are, from designer to creative director, the bigger the team the more minimal is your personal impact on the game, and the more minimal are the things you can do and try. Another thing triple-A and big console teams have to fight is that of keeping inertia. “On iOS it is going back to where triple-A
development on the main consoles was 12 or 15 years ago, where there was, I would say, ten-to-20 people making a game for the original PlayStation. Quickly those team sizes went up and up, and kept doubling.”
THE TRIPLE-A FAST TRACK However, that pace and energy that makes iOS development so appealing to console teams may also accelerate studios committed to mobile to a point that mirrors today’s arguably challenged high-end console gaming space. “This trend is going to change quickly, because those devices are getting more powerful all the time,” concludes Charpentier. “As that happens, surely we will need more people. It’s the same as the change in the console space from PlayStation 1 to PlayStation 3. “Perhaps the ‘iPad 4’ will be more powerful
than a PS3, and you will have big players wanting to do triple-A on the device. I don’t see how they will avoid having at least 30 or 40 people on the game. That is even already the case at some places making triple-A games for mobile.” Considering Capps’ prediction of the
first $1 million iOS game budget, Charpentier could be right. It may even be possible that in a couple of years the iPad market will be dominated by big hitting studios with millions to burn. For now, though, developing for mobile and tablet is giving established triple-A developers a refreshing change; a feeling of a return to an earlier time, when fierce creativity and advances in technology made the games industry seem like the most exciting place in the world. www.creative-assembly.co.uk
MAY 2012 | 41
The various prototype versions of Shogun’s iOS outing (above) show how important iteration was to bringing an intricate PC series to mobile