The Failure Workshop: How four studios built success from defeat
Succeeding in the indie game industry often takes years of patience, personal sacrifice and Ramen, a lifestyle often not discussed in popular stories of underground triumph and million-unit sales. The Failure Workshop at GDC aims to highlight the failures of otherwise successful studios, this year from Supergiant Games, Klei Entertainment, Enemy Airship and Northway Games.
We've listed the lessons from each below:
Jamie Cheng, Klei Entertainment (Shank, Eets)
After Eets and before Shank, in 2006, Klei began working on Sugar Rush, a second game in the Eets universe. It was greenlit by Nexon America, but was dropped two weeks before it was set to launch. Klei then tried to pitch it to consoles, but that fell through as well. During this process, Sugar Rush went through five art changes, three closed betas and a name change -- Scrappers -- transforming from a marshmallow-inspired character design, to tween, to adult, to mature and finally to cool, and all of it canceled for good in 2010.
Sugar Rush's failure stemmed from Klei's lack of conviction with the title, studio co-founder Jamie Cheng said. Klei didn't know exactly what it wanted Sugar Rush to be, meaning feedback from every beta tester and publishing partner affected its development dramatically. However, success did come from Sugar Rush's failure.
"Shank never would have happened without this," Cheng said.
We've listed the lessons from each below:
Jamie Cheng, Klei Entertainment (Shank, Eets)
After Eets and before Shank, in 2006, Klei began working on Sugar Rush, a second game in the Eets universe. It was greenlit by Nexon America, but was dropped two weeks before it was set to launch. Klei then tried to pitch it to consoles, but that fell through as well. During this process, Sugar Rush went through five art changes, three closed betas and a name change -- Scrappers -- transforming from a marshmallow-inspired character design, to tween, to adult, to mature and finally to cool, and all of it canceled for good in 2010.
Sugar Rush's failure stemmed from Klei's lack of conviction with the title, studio co-founder Jamie Cheng said. Klei didn't know exactly what it wanted Sugar Rush to be, meaning feedback from every beta tester and publishing partner affected its development dramatically. However, success did come from Sugar Rush's failure.
"Shank never would have happened without this," Cheng said.
