Annons
"When we first started, Team17 had no internal development, we worked out of a small office above an amusement arcade, and was built to be a games publisher for the Amiga platform, working closely with the talent we knew via 17Bit and using Microbyte's chain of stores for distribution. Fortunately we were insanely popular almost immediately, with 90 percent of our games hitting number one and, at one point, we had over 50 percent market share of all games sales on the Amiga.There's still nothing like inflicting cartoon pain and misery on someone sat next to you!
Annons
Annons
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"I was obviously around, but it was such a long time ago that some of the details are probably lost to the mists of time," Debbie recalls. "I believe one of the guys who used to be at Team17 back in the day had a particularly bad relationship with Stuart at Amiga Power. What started as a love/hate thing got blown up when they gave Worms a particularly bad review, despite it getting 90 percent and more from everyone else."From what I remember, Ocean Software – who we were working with at the time – placed a double-page ad in the trade press ridiculing Amiga Power and it all snowballed from there. It did turn into a bit of a free-for-all but we were all young, passionate and probably not as wise as we are these days. I think we've all grown up and mellowed since then, we even follow Stu on Twitter – and not just to check his reviews!"It seems that Team17 has left its troubles behind, and is now doing better than ever. Its most recent delve into third party publishing is almost like a return to its roots. I ask Debbie what the reason behind the shift was.
Annons
"Another key decision we made was that we'd split our internal development studio, so that 50 percent of it would be working on our own IP like Worms and Flockers, and the other half would be made available to our external partners to either help them with their games or develop other platform versions of the games they were working on."In terms of what we look for in games that we might publish, as simple as it sounds, the main things are a great original idea and a burning desire to see it come to life. One of the great things about the indie development explosion over the past few years has been this incredible burst of creativity, as can be seen in some of our recently-released and upcoming titles such as The Escapists, Beyond Eyes and Sheltered."Trading on pure nostalgia is the surest way of dying a slow death
Annons
Annons
It all sounds too good to be true, but having met the developers of The Escapists, Beyond Eyes and Sheltered at Rezzed (our report) this year, they all echoed how grateful they were to Team17 and its Indie Partner Program. None of what Debbie tells me is PR-fed lines and empty promises – these people's lives have been changed. Sherida Halatoe, developer of Beyond Eyes, had been working on the game for years before Team17 stepped in. She had had to cut certain aspects of it, but now with the added support, she is able to construct her vision properly. (No pun intended, given Beyond Eyes is about a blind girl who has to visualise the world using her other senses.)So what about the future? More third party publishing, or more in-house franchises like Worms and last year's puzzler Flockers? "We'll continue to do both. We have half of the studio working on original IP – nothing we can announce right now – and half working on supporting our partners. We do look at our back catalogue every now and again and see if there are old franchises that we could revisit. We'd have to be sure that the franchise was something we could update in a meaningful way and would have the same impact and excitement as something totally new. Trading on pure nostalgia is the surest way of dying a slow death. In that way we hold ourselves to the same high standards we have for any external project we sign."
Annons