Crysis Point

Crytek was formed in 1999 by Cevat Yerli together with his brothers, Avni and Faruk, who gave up their businesses - an ad agency and civil engineering consultancy - to try their luck in the games industry.

It was a bet which paid off, eventually. According to Cevat, the fledgling studio had "almost run out of money" by the time May 2000 rolled around, but a simple tech demo shown at E3 impressed graphics specialist Nvidia so much that they were asked to make a second one for that year's ECTS show.

The new demo, titled Exile: Dinosaur Island, in turn impressed Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot. In May 2001 a deal was signed to develop Far Cry, which went on to become a global success.

Crytek has since signed a new deal and its next game, PC shooter Crysis, will be published by EA this November. GamesIndustry.biz visited the Frankfurt studio last week and sat down with Cevat to find out more - part one of our exclusive interview is below, with part two set to follow on Thursday.

You can also read a full preview of Crysis, see exclusive screenshots and view a video of the game on Eurogamer.net.

Cevat Yerli: Everything's just bigger. From a business point of view, we have more support from EA and superior distribution and marketing power behind us, more freedom. It comes after Far Cry, too; that [game] established us in a different position.

We can dictate more, and at the same time we can ask for more support. They deliver more, because we both want this to be the best game. The relationship overall has been very positive, it's a team of people I would like to work and will work with again in the future.

Far Cry had its problems, but despite the fact it was rough at the end, I would like to say big thanks to Ubisoft and Yves Guillemot for taking the risk with us. If they hadn't done it, we would never have survived. I think under any other publisher - including EA - we would have been cancelled back then.

We were told to change things but we didn't. We said, 'No, we will keep it like this; believe us, trust us.' And Ubisoft gave up asking for things. Eventually things worked out as we envisioned and they were happy they gave in, but under any other circumstances, if Ubisoft hadn't known us personally it wouldn't have worked.

There were too many emotions involved back then, it was very passionate, and Yves Guillemot saw that we weren't arguing for money or anything - it was never for money - it was purely for passionate reasons. So he said, 'Okay, we will give up our position because these guys believe so strongly in this.'

It worked out, but it drained on the level of trust between us. If I look at past relationships and the situation we have with EA, the possibilities we have to mature and to grow - because as I said, Far Cry was an apprenticeship for us where we just learned how to make a game.

We still learn a lot every day, even with Crysis. Whilst many people think this is like a masterpiece et cetera, for me there is so much to improve with the design.

As we've been working with EA, many more possibilities have opened up for us - access marketing, distribution, market research, testing... That gives us a much more structural development.

Agile development is one of those things which doesn't fit with EA, as a matter of fact. I think EA will adapt and Microsoft will adapt. It's a very anti-corporate method, but I would argue it's actually the best method for any corporation - whether you have a thousand people or only 20.

It's based on iterations - no disturbing for two weeks, development, review, feedback. They're called two week sprints, so teams have achievement goals they sprint for and if they don't finish they have to work after hours. It's an agreement - they promise what they can deliver. If they promise less I may agree so they're not stretched too much.

There was a nano suit group, a customised weapons group, a group for human animation, enemy AI, multiplayer... They only co-ordinate every four weeks.

Every day they have a stand-up meeting where the leader of each team talks for one minute about what they're doing, then they have a stand-up meeting within their own groups, and that's it. The efficiency of the team is must higher because they talk fast, they're much more enthusiastic and energetic, and they have a defined goal.

The teams become like the teams of ten years ago, when they made games with five or six people. They were very fast and very small - that's the idea behind it. Ultimately if you fragment the project you fragment the problems.

I learned that problems are all related to organising your team. That's the bottom line. If you trust your team they can do anything - visuals, technology, gameplay, story, anything you need, but organising the team is key.

Part of pre-production has to be developing a team which can actually produce a team. That's the ultimate lesson I learned - it's not just a set of prototypes. I almost don't care about prototypes.

Of course I care, but visual mock-ups, prototypes, that must be done anyway - what's absolutely key is that you define a team which can produce the game. That structure and organisation has to be flexible.

I would never change things based on what my competitors are doing, but I would always use focus testing and be flexible in the organisation when it comes to change. Usually change is the biggest fear for people - they are afraid of new things to learn, new tools, new colleagues... These are ultimately social problems.

So they key thing I learned is that pre-production is your time for testing organisation. If you test it and then do it, it works. Then you're ready to make the best game.