"It Turned Out to Be a Good Decision" — Expedition 33 Authors on Hiring Young Employees
The French studio Sandfall Interactive, which released the phenomenal Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, hired more young and novice developers than one might expect from a team that created a Game of the Year contender. According to the words of the authors, this approach forced the team to work almost twice as hard as more experienced studios.
In an interview with Edge magazine, creative director Guillaume Broche explained that Sandfall Interactive gathered many young employees for several reasons. First, Montpellier is a "super young city." Second, experienced specialists usually choose safer places for employment. Furthermore, the studio did not have a single successful project in its portfolio at the time, which complicated attracting industry veterans.
[Young employees] had no expectations about how a studio should be run or how a game should be made. They brought fresh ideas that turned out to be very valuable for the rest of the project. So in the end, it turned out to be a good decision, but somewhat forced, because it's almost impossible to hire experienced specialists if you have no money, and there was none at the beginning.
Lead Designer Michel Nora
Producer Francois Meurisse added that young developers have many of their own advantages. "They didn't bring with them bad habits from other companies or past projects," he noted.
We were trying to create something new, and also master new skills from scratch. I would say we essentially did double the work because we were doing many things for the first time on such a scale. But we had the opportunity to study best practices and apply them in practice. I also collaborated and exchanged ideas a lot with other teams in France and in Montpellier, where many indie studios are based. I think this industry is wonderful: companies here cooperate rather than compete. We greatly benefited from sharing experiences.
Francois Meurisse
Sandfall Interactive's approach clearly proved successful. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 swept all possible and impossible awards, including "Game of the Year" at The Game Awards. And the project's sales have already surpassed 5 million copies sold.