Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 has been a runaway success for Sandfall Interactive's first game ever - having sold 3.3 million copies in 33 days, wildly - but the modest team will remain lean because some of the best games of all time weren't made by ginormous teams, either.
Sandfall Interactive COO and producer Francois Meurisse talked about resisting the urge to grow after a huge hit in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz. "For now, our vision would be to stick to a close team working in the same city with less than 50 people on board, focusing on one project after another, and keeping this agility, and this creative strength, and smartness of a small group of passionate people wanting to do something big," he said.
Meurisse explained that some all-time greats were made in much the same way. "The team that made Ocarina of Time or Half-Life 2, I think those were max 60 or 70 people, and that kind of size allows for good decisions and great creativity."
For context, as GI notes, Half-Life 2's credits list 84 core developers, not counting all the people involved in quality assurance, voice acting, and so on. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time's credits include fewer than 70 developers, but it doesn't list QA testers individually, so that's a bit murky.
Expedition 33 itself also used outsourced talent for its all-important animation, voice production, soundtrack, and QA - despite Sandfall Interactive employing just over 30 or so full-time staff. Either way, it's a refreshing step away from the AAA bloat we see in other games and a far cry from the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of names you see scrolling past the credits in, say, Call of Duty.
"We want to keep the organisation that made us successful," Meurisse added.
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 publisher says GTA 6 and Rockstar can make ballooning AAA budgets and team sizes work, but "there's been a lot of irresponsible practices in the industry" from others who can't
