Polytron Corporation worked on Fez for five years as a three-man team. Now that the game is out they may end up losing a third of their staff.
Renaud Bédard, the game’s lone programmer, said he’s likely going to break away from designer Phil Fish and sound engineer Jason DeGroot. He cites his desire to join a larger development team as the main reason.
“I will probably not be working at Polytron after Fez,” Bédard told Edge in an interview. “We’ve been a really close-knit team for five years, and that’s not necessarily healthy.”
“Being a lone programmer is a great experience: you do everything in the game, but you never have anybody to learn from or bounce ideas off. There’s the internet and forums, but that’s not the same experience as being part of a proper team, and I think that’s the experience I’m after now.”
Bédard cites his inexperience as a developer, undefined milestone targets and moving goalposts as difficulties faced during Fez‘s five year incubation period. He also touches on what it was like to work with Fish.
“There’s also perfectionism, and that’s down to Phil. If it’s not up to the standards we set ourselves, it’s not good enough. At many points, me and other people in the team were like, ‘We need to get this out. Everyone’s complaining. Everyone’s burnt out.’ But that’s Phil, his personality, and his vision of himself: he can’t just say, ‘That’s good enough, and that’s what you’re going to get.’”
Source: Edge
