The Wideload method's strength lies in its low burn rate. "If the team is small, the overhead is low," Seropian wrote in a Game Developer magazine postmortem. "Time equals money, so low overhead gives you lots more time to experiment and prototype (good for originality). Additionally, every project starts small and ends big. But if you think of each project as a cycle of life, your company goes extinct pretty quickly when you have 75 people wrapping a project and then you only need ten or so to start the next one. Staying small was the key."
Wideload's first project was the comedy-horror Xbox game Stubbs the Zombie in Rebel Without a Pulse, released by Aspyr Media for Halloween 2005. Production took 18 months. Wideload's own 11-person staff handled the game code, level design and writing, but everything else was outsourced. Principal contractors included The Animation Farm in Austin, Texas; audio and post-production by Post Effects in Chicago; a motion capture studio in Chicago's Hoffman Estates; and an art production house in Bangalore, India. Aspyr created the inventive Stubbs soundtrack, which restyles '50s pop standards as acidulous modern rock. (The game also features a malevolent barbershop quartet.)
Seropian tells The Escapist, "We contracted out character modeling, environment modeling, motion capture and animation, sound effects, music and voiceover, 2-D art for user interface, and the shell programming. Some of the contractors were individuals that we worked with previously at Bungie. Some were art outsourcing or post-production houses. Most were in the U.S., but two firms were overseas. In total, about 65 people [who were] not [full-time employees] of Wideload worked on Stubbs."
Does It Work?
Yes. An original and atmospheric game built on the Halo engine, Stubbs the Zombie received good reviews, though many thought it too short. Stubbs has sold well enough to fund Wideload's next project, as yet unannounced. The company will use the same method for that game.
"When I did the budget analysis prior to beginning production on Stubbs, I projected a 35 percent cost savings compared to staffing up with full-time positions," Seropian says. "However, we did have a schedule overrun of four months. Because of our low-overhead/outsourced production approach, we were able to hit our budget in spite of the delays. In hindsight, I expect our model saved us 45 percent on the production budget." He expects to realize similar or greater benefits on the new project.
But the Wideload way has a learning curve. Stubbs the Zombie had no producer, and that caused trouble. They had trouble getting accurate bids from contractors, trouble with underperforming workers, trouble training artists to use the engine. "The big point here is that our model works best when the iteration process is as efficient as possible. That means the cycle of assignment-production- submission-review-revision is really clean and tight. When you start dividing that process among people in different places using different tools, it can get cumbersome. We gained great efficiency once we got everyone using the same communication tools, production tools and previewing tools.
"If you are going to have contributors spread out in different locations, it's critical to have communication and production tools optimized for non-face-to-face work flow. That means you need to be super-organized and over-communicate. You need tools to preview and share ideas and direction. The outsourced model also requires different skills. For instance, artistic talent alone will not get you good results. Managing contractors takes management and direction skills you can't afford to be lazy about."
