Molding Klei: An Interview with Jamie Cheng
Feature
Ever wonder how an indie company makes it big? Jamie Cheng of Klei Entertainment speas about the trials and tribulations of starting a new studio.
Moving on to Mexico (cntd)
Hooked Gamers: You self-published your first game; how did you end up with EA for Shank?
Jamie Cheng: We went into Shank self-publishing it as well. We developed Shank for about a year without a publisher, actually. With EA we were able to put it out on multiple platforms simultaneously and as you were talking about, we were able to put Shank on Steam, on PSN, and on Xbox. They respected our vision of the game. That was really key. When they approached us we already had the game fully up and running. There wasn’t really a question of what the game was going to be. For their part they were able to help us finish the game and put it on multiple platforms.
Hooked Gamers: Are there any specific things that EA requested?
Jamie Cheng: Obviously they gave us feedback, but a lot of it is more like, set up a play test with other people to get their feedback and really dig into it. Mike Doran is our producer at EA and he and I are good friends. So basically we work off each other anyway. It’s not really a ‘publisher requests this thing,’ it’s more about Mike just talking about it and saying ‘this will be really cool. What do you think?’ They know it’s our game, they know it’s our property and they trust us to do what’s right.
Sheathing the Blade
Hooked Gamers: It’s early to be asking this, but Shank 3? Future projects? How far are you thinking ahead?
Jamie Cheng: Oh boy. I think our team is… we love Shank, and we’ve been doing it for a while. I think that we’re going to do something else for a bit before we would come back.
Hooked Gamers: Any hints on what that may be?
Jamie Cheng: We’re working on a couple of things. The one thing I can say is that we are doing Eets. Eets is coming out again on several different platforms, definitely on the iPad. We’re doing a remix on that.
Hooked Gamers: Any last remarks? The floor is yours.
Jamie Cheng: I guess the thing I’m most proud of is, in Shank 1 we focused on the controls a lot. And honestly people either loved the controls or they hated it. There was always something and that was like ‘really? Really? Because we spent so much time on it!’ And as we kept at fixing it I think we figured it out and so far all I’ve gotten is really positive things at shows of Shank 2. Hopefully it works out.