At DICE 2009, Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi outlined the “10 Commandments” Capcom tried to adhere to as a developer – rules that helped birth games like Lost Planet and Dead Rising.
Takeuchi’s commandments have been neatly summarized by Stephen Totilo over at MTV Multiplayer. Some of them are directly business-related, dealing with things like finances and budgets:
1. Keep staff turnover below 10 percent per annum.
2. Maintain the ability (and cash reserves) to increase personnel by 10 percent each year.
3. Keeping the first two points in mind, keep development cost fluctuation within 10%.
Others are a bit less specifically fiscal and more visionary:
6. Goals and objectives must be adaptable to external forces. (Takeuchi cited as a positive example, Square-Enix moving the Dragon Quest series to the Nintendo DS.)
10. Don’t set unachievable targets.
Above all, stressed Takeuchi, the thing that trumps every single one of these commandments can be summarized in one short word: “fun.” Does the gamer enjoy what they’re playing? Without that, Takeuchi believes, “I think you lose the reason for your company to exist. This is the never-changing spirit of Capcom.”
Capcom’s track record for fun this year has been pretty good so far. Let’s hope RE5 delivers similarly.
