Japanese RPG specialist Falcom has been churning out games since 1982, and in the ever-changing world of game development, that’s no mean feat.
But, just how has the Ys and The Legend of Heroes developer managed to survive this long in a world as creatively challenging and hyper-competitive as the games industry?
In a recent interview with USGamer, company president Toshiro Kondo explained the studio’s ability to adapt to continuously shifting market and production conditions has been critical.
As new, more powerful consoles drive up development costs, the studio boss revealed how Falcom has repositioned itself to tackle those challenges head on.
“One thing that might be the secret to this that has been a Falcom tradition for a long, long time is that all of the people on staff absolutely love games and making games,” he explained.
Though Kondo explains that’s now necessarily a “hard and fast rule,” he underlines the importance of hiring passionate people who are happy to step into a number of different roles. Creative chameleons, he says, keep costs down.
“[If your team is] interested in the games that they make, it really allows people to kind of go beyond themselves and to do lots of other different things. That probably has a lot to do with how we’ve been able to continue in spite of rising costs.”
There are other benefits to having a smaller, more versatile development team though. For starters, it makes internal communication infinitely easier — and when everyone is pulling in the same direction, your game is only going to benefit.
“You don’t need to spend time or money doing a lot of communication because it’s much easier to get everyone on the same page,” adds Kondo. “Another thing is that when you do work on a very small team like this, you know that there’s no one else to do certain things but yourselves.
“You’re taking on the responsibility here yourself within the team to get things done. Because we do work on things with such small teams, that kind of creates the ‘Falcom feeling’ you might get when you play our games.”
Be sure to check out the full interview over on USGamer to hear more from the Falcom president.