Climax Revealed

Climax UK isn't new to the gaming world, having developed more than two-dozen titles over the past fifteen years. Known best for racing titles like Moto GP, Climax is hoping to become synonymous with RPG excellence with the release of Sudeki for Xbox later this year.

We've already brought you an in-depth interview with the Sudeki team regarding their upcoming first-party title. And while there will be much more info coming regarding Sudeki, we wanted you to get to know the people working on one of Microsoft's biggest titles for 2003. This is the year of RPGs on Xbox, and expectations for Sudeki are high. We sat down with three Climax big-wigs to discuss their roles in the studio and what it's like to work on such a high-profile title.

Joe Cavalla (Managing Director of Climax development), Tuomas Pirinen (Lead Designer Sudeki), and Mark Simmons (Producer Sudeki) gave us the run-down of life as a game designer. Along with their smiling faces, you'll find new screenshots of Sudeki and a brand new movie.

Joe: I'm the managing director for Climax Development. We're based in Portsmouth [England]. My job is the running of the entire development studio, of which Sudeki takes up about half of my day. I'm responsible for all aspects of running the studio. I've got a senior management team who work alongside me to support in management, technical aspects and creative aspects of game development. We have regular daily meetings discussing where the various projects are.

Tuomas: I am responsible for every single design aspect [on Sudeki]. That includes writing up the descriptions for the concept artists, overseeing the level design, overseeing the scripting of the events, overseeing all the technical designs, writing design documents, and using the in-house tools to create the content in the game, overseeing the story, overseeing the character dialogue, talking to practically all the departments -- sound, character artists, environment artists, animators, special effects guys, the coders, and arguing a lot with Mark, and of course overseeing an unruly bunch of designers. I'm really responsible for keeping the game cohesive and above all else trying to make a fun game and gameplay experience. And there is a lot of personal investment, because RPGs are my favorite type of game. It's something I could never pass up. It's been a great challenge and a lot of late nights, but I think it's gonna be well worth it.

Mark: I'm the Producer on Sudeki. I joined Climax as a producer, seeing Sudeki as an excellent opportunity to produce an amazing RPG. I've always had a massive passion for RPGs, I've played a lot of them myself, but to this point I've never worked on one. I was working at Micropose, working on the X-Com series and the American Mayhem series before coming here. It's great to be able to work on a console RPG like this, especially on Xbox with all the extra power. And the team for us -- it's just been a brilliant experience for us.

IGN: Describe your average day.

Joe: I guess my day starts by hooking up with the other senior directors within the studio and just having a chat with those guys about where different projects are at. And from that we dish out tasks for the day and go from there. Usually my tasks relate to a broad range of issues within the development studio including accounting, marketing on the different projects, development process, game design issues, making sure everything is on time and on target, and that the vision for any of the products we're developing is being held fairly firm.

Sudeki, like I say, takes up a lot of my day. About 50% of the development staff are in the studio working on Sudeki and that's roughly around 50 people in the development team. I've been working at Climax now for about four years and prior to being managing director for the studio, I was actually creative director and was integral in the initial start-up of Sudeki along with Tuomas. We're key vision holders for the project's ongoing direction. I've been involved with Sudeki right from its inception, which started in September of 2000.

So in the average day, like I say, various meetings go on, lots of different things to discuss, at the moment on Sudeki there's an awful lot of gameplay testing and refinement going on. We were first playable June of last year. So since June of last year the game's been in a playable state, so there's been a considerable amount of refinement and getting the gameplay nailed and trying to make sure we're focused on what our key vision of the game and where our core gameplay elements are within the entire title. Obviously, it's a fairly far-reaching title so there's a lot of focus on a broad range of different elements. My responsibilities to Sudeki directly are to make sure the original vision to the game is maintained.