MinnMax’s Ben Hanson interviews David Sears on his incredible journey through the video game industry, beginning in the early 90s on cult classics like Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream and most recently with the release of South of Midnight from Compulsion Games. We talk about crunch and the most challenging developments of his career, two lost Nintendo 64 games from legendary developer Looking Glass, why he’s waiting for Sony to call about creating a new SOCOM game, the controversial story of Rainbow 6 Patriots, and the upside of consulting with his new company Orphan Toyz.
That segment is doing the rounds right now on Twitter:
David Sears (Creative Director) said he would not have funded South of Midnight
David: “I literally told people, I was like yeah this is wow, this this could be terrible, because somebody is going to say one day you know the money tap it was like we’re closing those floodgates and that’s going to have really traumatic results downstream.”
Ben: “So the idea is you’re you’re thankful Microsoft supported the hell out of South of Midnight. Seems like positive experience overall, but You would not have funded it yourself. If you were actually running Xbox, you would have been like, "No, turn off that tap much quicker.”
David: “Yeah, probably.”
Ben: “That is a very confusing thing to hear.”
David: “Yeah. I mean, I wanted to make it, no doubt, right? And obviously because we made it. You know, would I have turned off, you know, someone else’s money flow before South Midnight? Yeah, cuz, I’m not completely selfless. But, you know, it it just seems like in hindsight at least, it was unsustainable. So, of course, it was going to have a, you know, shocking
outcome.”
I think you should listen to the whole segment beginning at 52:00, because there’s quite a bit of context before what is quoted at 58:00.
I don’t think this reflects well on the creative director at all. Like obviously Phil Spencer shares a lot of the blame because the overall strategy of funding smaller, artsy games for Game Pass was his idea. But you purposely pitched a game you believed would not be successful, and you acknowledge that if it had been your decision you would have turned down your own pitch? I find that really reckless and irresponsible.
He even acknowledges that the money tap would eventually be turned off and he expected his company to end up in a bad state when that happened! And still went ahead with it! Really irresponsible.
The guy isn’t the only one responsible, of course, Double Fine basically did the same shit… It is clear that the studios weren’t fully commited to save Xbox or doing anything remotely close to helping them get those consumers back… Well, he’s admitting that they did the opposite thing, taking their sweet time to make the best game they could, but knowing well what it could lead to. Of course, they weren’t surprised by the layoffs and shutdowns, he’s saying he knew they were coming…
When Tim Schaffer reacted to the wave of shutdowns, that’s when I knew what has been going on. Tim wasn’t mad or anything and it felt weird knowing him.
We kind of knew this behavior had been going on for a while, but now it’s clear that it’s what was going on the whole time…
Studios under phil deliberately slowed down development cause they knew they were allowed to and were secure. Honestly good on them, its like a guy giving you money for nothing why say no? The one at fault is phil spencer for allowing this to happen.
At the end of the day its just their job, no developer should be obliged to see it as nothing more than that. That’s why I think auteur like Kojima are very unique, remember that obsidian guy who went on to say he always hated xbox and loves Playstation?
It’s crazy that you think this is all good since it put his own team at risk, he is not the only one affected in it. It’s easy to blame this on the rich guy who allowed it, while it only paints independent studios in a bad light as being irresponsible and lacking accountability, in a time where studios are facing so much scrutiny and many people celebrate their closures and layoffs due to anti-woke garbage.
Also don’t even try to compare this to Kojima who is a brand name and always has a base level of fan interest that is big enough for companies to fund his works.
Yeah from that prospective its a dumb thing to say as the studio head. But if you get 7 years high salary guaranteed alot of people would just lose motivation and drive, phil didn’t even have game performance bonuses. I worked with people who thought like that and would extend a 3 month project to 6 or 8 months.
There was clearly issues with the structure of the studios, lack of oversight, no accountability or pressure, even with the publishings partners. Complete freedom doesn’t work for everyone, some pressure and limitations should be imposed to actually get stuff out.
Bro the whole plan was stupid from the get go. Why buy all these studios when you could of just funded more established studios for games ? Why take one thousands of extra employees for no noticeable improvement? Xbox should mostly focus on big games and triple its marketing budget that’s it.
You have to also remember that gaming trajectory was supposed to overtake movies&TV and that didn’t happen. Gaming is 180bil a year and 100 of that is mobile. Phil probably thought the growth won’t stop .
This is also amateur hour as far as decisions go. Ask me what I would not have funded. I would not have funded Concord, TLOU MMO, Horizons MMO, Dreams, Marathon. He’s rookie novice level not funding chief. Heck, I’ll go even further out and include not funding Madam Web and Morbius.
Yeah, the “plan” was also based on 2017 math. Pre-covid, pre-AI, pre-ABK, pre-Ukrain war, etc. all these changed things drastically around costs and growth. Who knows how things would turn out without all that, maybe now consoles would be priced down, and all the studios would fine and subsidized by sustained higher game pass subs. Different world almost.
Personally, I thought that South of Midnight was a great game overall. The weakest aspect was the combat/gameplay and while not bad, it was a poor man’s Kena. But everything else was great across the board from graphics/art style to music/voice acting to story/characters. Still hoping for a sequel.
Midnight was also Compulsion’s best game in their history. Contrast was mediocre and We Happy Few wasn’t much better. Midnight was a massive improvement across the board and showed potential in the studio when given money, time and resources.
As for David Sears, correct me if im wrong but it seems like that he’s not even at Compulsion Games anymore. Is that correct? If so, this is the Xbox Tax. People always looking for ex-Microsoft employees that worked for Xbox just so they can get some negativity out there.
I disagree with TLOU Factions as IP alone, that had the second best chance at success in regards to Sony’s live service push with Spider Man online game being first best chance at success. The Horizon MMO from Guerrilla looks horrible and not like Horizon at all. But Horizon Steel Frontiers looks fucking awesome which is being developed by NC Soft if I remember correctly. Why Sony wouldn’t just have had Guerrilla go straight to Horizon 3 and have the Horizon Steel Frontiers game coming to PS5 (it’s currently slated for Mobile and PC) is beyond me.
It’s shocking that all these people who have consultancies or who are looking for jobs in the industry give interviews or make social media posts saying exactly what all the console warriors are, after they’ve left Xbox.
It’s almost like they’re trying to curry favour by dinging on the industry’s favourite scapegoat…
I mean, I know I’d want to hire this guy to consult for my game company after hearing that he sabotaged a previous employer by pitching a game he knew would not make money!
Trashing Xbox is always good for some initial positive feedback but he may not have fully thought this through…
And look, on a more serious note, this can’t be good for the next time a publisher is nervous about saying yes to a game with a minority lead or that explores an unusual setting or culture. “Just look at South of Midnight - even the creative director that fought for it secretly knew it was a loser.”
