If Heplergate taught us anything, it's that gamers seem to be adamant about the idea that only people who really know games should be making games. As it turns out, if we look at developers for some big games, like over at Rockstar, you don't always have someone who is originally a 'gamer', knows anything about games, or hell, even likes games!
This doesn't matter to Peter Molyneux, who recently left Lionhead Studios to form his own development studio, 22Cans. One's first guess might be that someone like Molyneux would try to fill his studio with strong talent–which isn't incorrect. But where this talent comes from may surprise people: he's looking for folk outside the industry. He explains why in an interview in Gamasutra:
Fresh perspectives. So often, in life, when you get used to do something one way, it's very hard to persuade your brain to do it in another way. Whether it be brushing your teeth from left to right, or whether it be "I write this sort of game," or "I design in this sort of way."
And if you're just trying to think in a different way, then having people around you who have never thought in a way that you've thought just means you're far, far more likely to discover something you didn't know existed.
Part of my belief is, at the moment, there's a lot to discover. There's a lot to discover about cloud, and persistence, and multi-device, and linking people together, and analytics, and a lot to discover about bringing them together.
And when you've got people that you're sitting next to who have never designed a game before in their life saying, "Oh, you know, I don't understand what 'leveling up' means." You'd never question that as a designer if you were working in an old place. It's that fresh perspective which is so fascinating.
Other studios have had success with this approach, but we don't yet know if Molyneux was right in taking it yet. Suppose the games will tell all once we get to play them!
