Postmortems from Game Developer

Surreal Software'sDRAKAN: ORDER OF THE FLAME

by stuart denman

Origins of the Team

Because DRAKAN was Surreal's first product, the story of DRAKAN’s development is also the story of Surreal's development as a company. Surreal's creation is the classic game development story in which four ambitious recent college graduates decided they had nothing to lose and formed a game company. These four founders contributed four critical skills to the team: art, programming, design, and business skills. None of us had ever run a company or managed schedules, but we all loved games, and we knew what it took to make a good one.

Lead designer Alan Patmore had always played games and had the business savvy to complement Nick Radovich's business experience and ...