Old School Gamer chats with former Sony Computer Entertainment producer Grady Hunt, who discusses the PS1 classic, Medieval.
Old School Gamer: What was your role in the game?
Grady Hunt: I was working at SCEA in the Product Development team, I was the Producer most interested in the title at the time. The art style was very unique, it had a Tim Burton feel to it.
Old School Gamer: What was the dev cycle like for you?
Hunt: It was a pretty rough development, the came together in the end and was impressively good, but throughout production it definitely had its up’s and downs. The Cambridge team working on the game was extremely talented and creative, particularly in art and design. The vision was impressive, the development needed to catch up to the vision which happened near the end of production. I was the “localization Producer” on the project, but was really interested and excited about the game, probably drove them a bit crazy at times. I was working on Crash Warped with Naughty Dog at this time also. We were doing a lot of usability testing, using expertise that Mark Cerny had brought with him from working at Sega. I wanted to do usability for this project, like we were doing on Crash. We started by doing “expert reviews” using our internal QA group and aggregated issues and provided feedback to the team. Eventually we did user tests as well. We also travelled to Cambridge to meet the team and walk through our game play findings. Might have been one of my favorite trips to visit a dev ever. Cambridge is amazing, and everyone on team were friendly, fun and extremely cool and talented.
Old School Gamer: Why do you think this franchise is still so adored?
Hunt: I think this is an example of a game where the team took a creative risk and made a game that was very unique and fun. There was no other experience like it when it shipped and the artistic vision was truly great.
Old School Gamer: What do you think makes the First game so special?
Hunt: I think it surprised people, and was rewarded for being so unique and having such as strong vision.
Old School Gamer: What was challenging about your job on this one? Any important lessons learned?
Hunt: I think it is important when you work on a project that is highly creative that you connect with and respect the team you are working with. Going to Cambridge to deliver game play feedback in person was invaluable versus sending the same feedback in email. People working on the game have the opportunity to ask questions and see that you are there to help. At this time in gaming, usability testing was not common, this kind of feedback and data needed to be delivered in a way that was overbearing and in way where it was helpful to the team. Ultimately the team needs to decide what elements they are going to action as a Producer you just want an opportunity to point a spotlight on issues.
Old School Gamer: How would you like the game to be remembered?
Hunt: This is game had sort of a cult following, it was not a huge mainstream product, although it did well, those who played it, loved it. Sometimes when I play a game you can feel the energy of the team, you feel like “hey these guys really dug working on this game!”, I feel like this about Medievil.
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