MinnMax Interview - South Of Midnight's David Sears On Perplexing Xbox Management (Patreon)

MinnMax's Ben Hanson interviews David Sears on his incredible journey through the video game industry, beginning in the early 90s on cult classics like Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream and most recently with the release of South of Midnight from Compulsion Games. We talk about crunch and the most challenging developments of his career, two lost Nintendo 64 games from legendary developer Looking Glass, why he's waiting for Sony to call about creating a new SOCOM game, the controversial story of Rainbow 6 Patriots, and the upside of consulting with his new company Orphan Toyz.

Watch and share the video version here - https://youtu.be/_mHAV-7OWjE

To jump to a particular discussion, check out the timestamps below...

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:58 - Welcome David Sears

00:02:12 - How "masterpieces" don't need huge development teams

00:06:41 - Would he want to direct a new SOCOM?

00:09:53 - Consulting with Orphan Toyz

00:14:45 - Mini Racers, the canceled N64 game from Looking Glass

00:21:24 - Development lessons from Nintendo

00:24:59 - David's "Lost Design Artifacts"

00:31:22 - X-Stream, the lost Ubisoft kayaking game on N64

00:33:07 - Predicting when a studio/game will collapse

00:34:47 - Rainbow 6 Patriots and its controversial story

00:43:09 - Why SOCOM was a success on PS2

00:48:19 - Creating South of Midnight

00:51:56 - Xbox mismanagement versus funding cool games

01:06:12 - Veteran developers' indie game visibility

01:08:27 - The bruatal development of Clive Barker's Ectosphere (canceled)

01:16:59 - The lost PS3 game, working on PSP

01:19:48 - Dreaming up new IP that never releases

01:23:03 - Where The Wild Things Are

01:24:47 - "I apologize" - David's biggest development lesson