Adventure action Star Wars Jedi: Survivor was created in a record short time

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the last release from Electronic Arts Inc, is a kind of miracle in the modern development of video games. It is completely solitary, has no microtransactions and was created during the pandemic in about three years – two times less time than it takes to create many modern large games.

But Stig Asmussen, director of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, quickly rejects any assumptions that the game development process was wonderful.

"If anything is, this is a certificate of work of the team", – Asmussen said in a recent interview, adding that it was easier to plan a schedule, since it was a continuation, and not a completely new type of game. "And, to be honest, it was three and a half years".

Survivor is a continuation of the 2019 game Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, the number of players of which, according to EA, exceeded 20 million. Both games were developed by the Los Angeles company Respawn Entertainment owned by EA.

EA expects the game Star Wars Jedi: Survivor will help to recover from an unsuccessful period. In January, the publisher of the video game closed the game studio and canceled several games, including another Respawn project. Last month, EA fired 6% of her employees. The future of the profitable annual football video game EA is also in question after EA parted with FIFA last spring and plans to release the game this year under the new brand.

Respawn began to develop Survivor in the fall of 2019. A few months later, when the pandemic erupted, Asmussen and his team quickly adapted to remote work. "I think we were lucky to some extent because we were at the very early stage of production", – he said. "The lion’s share of work on Star Wars Jedi: Survivor passed remotely".

Respawn developers postponed their regular meetings at Zoom and introduced a weekly open forum "Jedi’s conversation", who allowed any team member to ask questions or share claims. According to Asmussen, the biggest problem was "re -learn to communicate with each other", And this process was complicated by the intricacies of text conversations in Slack, in which tone and nuances could be lost. "You have to adjust the course", – Says Asmussen.

The success of these adjustments forced Respawn to accept remote work. EA allowed each of its subsidiaries to choose how to relate to the policy of returning to the office, and Respawn over the past three years allowed employees to move and expanded to get to work to any place. This is a striking contrast with some competing games publishers, such as Activision Blizzard Inc, who demanded from many employees of returning to the office.

Even if it were not for the problems of pandemia, a three- and one and a half-year development cycle of Star Wars Jedi: Survivor would be an outstanding achievement. Other games that should be released in 2023, including The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, Diablo 4 and Final Fantasy 16, have been under development for more than six years. Relatively simple sequels, such as God of War: Ragnarök and Horizon: Forbidden West, also occupied at least four years.

Respawn has become one of the most important EA studios thanks to a non -stop series of hits, including Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order and a popular multiplayer shooter Apex Legends. With the game Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, the studio seems to have achieved another success – even if the developers do not want to call it a miracle.