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While
the milestone wasn’t marked with a massive restructuring or round of layoffs,
2005 brought about a big change for Radical Entertainment: they ceased operating
as an independent developer. The company was purchased by Vivendi Universal on
the heels of producing Hulk (2003) and The Simpsons: Hit & Run (2003) for the
publisher.
The acquisition marked the departure of co-founder Ian Wilkinson, after 16
years, and the arrival of Kelly Zmak as studio head in July of 2005. It wasn’t
in a hail of firings either; it seems to have been a
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very peaceful changeover.
Zmak started in the gaming industry as a QA tester back in 1985, dropped out of
university in the process, and climbed the production ladder through various
developers to the top of the food chain. He received a call from Wilkinson, who
was essentially seeking Zmak
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out to
replace him.
Initially, Zmak wanted nothing to do with it but changed his mind after
Wilkinson convinced him to spend a day at the studio. He was won over by the
atmosphere of the studio and admired the way that Wilkinson had navigated the
previous 16 years, many of those years on the edge of knife, building a group
that was very adaptable and worked with a high level of trust in their
co-workers.
Wilkinson’s cultivation of the studio’s “family” atmosphere is an aspect of the
studio that Eric Holmes, former Lead Designer at Radical, also notes.
“I think Ian deserves enormous credit for taking Radical from inception to his
point of departure. He defined so much of the core of the place not by his
actions but by who he empowered and when he stepped back to let them do what
they do. I've never worked at a studio where the senior figure didn't seem to
have a target painted on his back UNTIL I worked at Radical - it was inspiring
to see Ian was not only someone that people respected the hell out of, but that
they really liked and wanted to see more of on a daily basis. Whatever it is,
Ian has it.”
The log cabin in the Great Room was built for a
simple reason: There was some money remaining when the space was renovated for the studio.
One of the more important developments was that Radical was given the green
light to pursue their second original intellectual property (IP) in the
company’s then 15 year history.
“At the time there was hesitancy about new IP - it was a new and risky thing for
Radical,” recalls Holmes. “So we wanted to compare all the options. Part of that
involved creating licensed pitches and comparing that to the appeal of original
IP. There was a Radical IP library which was essentially a sealed-off folder
with ideas from the different eras of the studio. We created a list of all the
concepts, including one where you play an Aardvark in a fitness game.”
“We raced forward with one of the IPs we had developed but it was the ONE
property out of about 12 still standing that we hadn't tested AT ALL,” recounts
Holmes. “But this idea just had this amazingly undeniable energy to it that just
got
people
going when it was explained to them. That concept was Prototype.”
Even if the green light was given slightly
before his arrival, Zmak considered it “borderline insane” that Prototype had
been given the funding to proceed owed to the risk of producing an unknown
quantity but the development process was one of his happiest memories of working
at Radical.
Holmes says, “Significantly, it felt like an idea that was only possible on
next-gen hardware and I think that got everyone licking their lips to see it.
Impossible on XBox. How about the 360? Could it do it? Let's find out! There was
the promise of a new dimension in gameplay with the shapeshifting element with
lots of "creative headroom.” We only partially delivered on that, but I still
think that is much of the power of the IP.”
“It was a great proposition for Vivendi,” continues Holmes “They needed what
Prototype offered, their portfolio ached for it. We got a lot of support
internally, from Bruce Hack, Cindy Cook and many other key players. It was a
moment of great pride to be showing what we'd made to these senior figures and
see them jump with surprise at what we were pulling off. Prototype still has a
huge advantage in terms of character count over any other game in its space. A
lot of that is due to that early effort to create a next-gen city scene and a
commitment to realise a mass of people in a believable space.”
Holmes wasn’t the only one to throw his
enthusiasm behind an original IP and gladly escaping the shackles of a licensed
property.
Tom
Legal says that working on an original IP was “a lot more satisfying. We didn’t
have “The Man” or if it’s Matt Groening telling you that you’re doing it wrong
and it has to change... that you have to go and change all the teeth in the
Simpsons characters because they’re not
correct.”
“It also created a feeling of ownership,” says Dave Fracchia, Radical’s current
VP of Technology. “If something is your baby, you’ve created it and you’ve
nurtured it... you gravitate more towards it.”
The mood in the studio was understandably upbeat and positive but before
Prototype could launch there was a bump in the road. Activision and Vivendi
merged and Radical Entertainment became a wholly owned studio of Activision
Blizzard.
Zmak lost sleep, the merger made him anxious
and there were rumours of dramatic cuts and even outright closure of the studio.
Then the hammer dropped and staffing levels were halved, an unannounced project
axed (Scarface 2), and the studio was reduced to a husk of the company at its
peak.
Then another round of layoffs in 2009 after the launch of Prototype and the
cancellation of another unannounced project. It spawned 60 more “ex-Radicalites.”
Radical
Entertainment, one of the principal roots of the game development family tree in
Vancouver, was on the verge of being slashed and burned.
Fracchia recalls that “the difficult part
with the merger -- Activision Blizzard -- was not merging with Activision, it
was the fact we had layoffs because of it. We went from 4 teams down to 2, and
then a little over a year ago (2010) went from 2 to 1. It’s the loss of people
we care about that’s hard because we have that kind of family feel. Seeing great
friends and great people leave because of downsizing is always difficult.”
Zmak credits the developers that remained for their adaptability and maturity
for being able to buckle down after all the changes. According to Zmack, the
silver lining of being a one-game studio is that the developers can focus on a
single project and make it as good as it has the potential to be. Zmak is not
only a person that seems to like change, he’s also an optimist.
Prototype itself performed well financially with more than 2 million copies sold
worldwide, and was relatively well received critically. It was enough to
convince Activision that a sequel would be viable and Prototype 2 was announced
at the close of 2010.
Capping five years of near constant change, Zmak left Radical in the early part
of 2010 so was not with the company for the announcement of a sequel.
He took some time off from the game industry but recently founded Infinite Games
Publishing in Montreal, Quebec, which recently acquired funding for a
free-to-play product. It’s a move to “smaller and cheaper” and “different”
experiences from the sprawling open-world of Prototype.
When asked “Why Montreal?” Zmak reports he was looking for the coldest place in
the world to work; failing that he went where the investors could be found.
While
the milestone wasn’t marked with a massive restructuring or round of layoffs,
2005 brought about a big change for Radical Entertainment: they ceased operating
as an independent developer. The company was purchased by Vivendi Universal on
the heels of producing Hulk (2003) and The Simpsons: Hit & Run (2003) for the
publisher.
