'For a small studio, with only enough resources to handle one game at a time, "transition" equals "layoffs." The early stages of a new project - concept art, placeholder code, design docs and blue-sky brainstorming - work best with small teams. So the execs fire everyone else, until it's time to ramp up once more. If they try to reassemble the same bunch later, guess what? Everyone has scattered to other jobs. It's just one more way the industry is broken.'

Allen Varney talks to Wideload Games' "Man With a Plan," Alex Seropian, about the future of game development.

The Wideload Way

I, for one, hope to see this implemented more in the future. More efficient development cycles can really only help the industry.

The article was a really good read and proved that modern production methods do not necessarily kill innovative and creative game design. Instead it can boost the possibilities of smaller studios to persue their own ways by lowering production costs significantly and focussing the talent intensively on the core of the game creation process. Wideload has prooven that effectiveness does not diminish creativity, thus respect to them for taking the risk of finding new paths.
I wish them all well for the future.

For all interested, Gamasutra published a postmortem on the production of Stubbs.
Here the link: http://gamasutra.com/features/20060811/seropian_01.shtml

I like the business model that Wideload is adopting. It appears that it can be viable in today's market and we're likely to see it applied by other studios. However, I will wait to give my praise till the model actually produces a few innovative and groundbreaking titles. Stubbs was a good game, but that's all it was. Until I see some exciting new titles come from studios utilizing this method, I say it's unproven. The end product experience is what's important.