from the get-go, they were careful to set strict boundaries in place.


“At the beginning of the project, you’re really excited because it’s new,” says Hegarty. “We have to tell people: You need to be just as excited about the game in three years’ time as you are now. Because that’s when we’ll be putting all the final touches together, making all those final calls and trying to keep the energy going. “There was an interesting conversation I had with someone who joined us from another company, where crunch was rife. We’d gone through the big ‘no crunch’ talk and all the methods we employ, and he goes ‘yeah, but I presume you ARE going to crunch it.’ “And like, no! That’s the behaviour and the mindset we need to challenge. If you think you’re going to crunch, then you probably will. But if you think you’re not going to do


“There was an interesting conversation I had with someone who joined us from another company, where crunch was rife. We’d gone through the big ‘no crunch’ talk and all the methods we employ, and he goes ‘yeah, but I presume you ARE going to crunch it.’


it, you’re going to start your day with a different mindset. If you have to finish at half 5, then you have to adjust your day. Does this meeting need to be an hour? Can it be half an hour? You make those kinds of decisions.” Even once the passion runs dry, there seems to be an almost fatalistic acceptance of burnout in creative industries. Video games are hard to make – and therefore surely they must require some level of suffering in order to exist. It’s an easy trap to fall into. The image of the tortured artist is a classic for a reason – but it’s one that hides the fact that there are often better, less painful ways of doing things.


“I see this conversation a lot,” says Hegarty. “You see people saying ‘games are hard to make,’ or ‘I’m surprised they get made at all!’ And if you’d asked me a few years ago I’d probably have said ‘yeah, they’re really hard!’ “I’m not sat here saying that it’s easy – and I’m not a developer or an animator, so I’m a step removed from it slightly. But you know, we’re not doing brain surgery, or rocket science here. I think we need to move away from the idea that it’s just really hard. It can be difficult, but it’s also really creative. You can put those structures in place. “I think smaller companies need to look at what the bigger companies have been doing for years, because they’re doing really difficult and creative stuff. The structures that you can bring in don’t impede your creativity, but actually boost it. A lot of people see those structures and more formal ideas as something that can potentially ruin your creative process. But you need those in place to make sure that you can create something remarkable.”


“I think that’s a really interesting point there,” says Bennett. “We always thought that making games involved late night pizzas. We were excited by that when we started out in our shabby office in Deptford, making the first OlliOlli. I’d read all the stories about EA, the spouses of employees complaining about how late they work. That’s how they made games, and we’re just a few people in Deptford with no money and on a wing and a prayer. If we’re going to make a game that can compete with those guys, we’re going to need to do this. “It literally took us until 2018 to challenge that philosophy. And it has to come from the directors of the studio. It can’t be something that sort of permeates through the lower echelons. It has to be absolutely core to the beliefs and the values of the studio in order for it to work, the directors have to live and own that too. “It’s challenging the de facto way of working. Let’s face it, unlike the film industry, this industry doesn’t have a very


Above: The introduction of a surprisingly varied character creator allows players to truly express themselves in OlliOlli World


April 2022 MCV/DEVELOP | 59


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