After the surprise success of their student game Octodad, a group of recent college graduates were crazy enough to try to make a commercial sequel. Three years later, Octodad: Dadliest Catch became the debut release from their independent studio Young Horses and earned enough to fund a seven-person team full-time.
At GDC Next 2014, Young Horses cofounders Phil Tibitoski and John Murphy discussed the methods they used to create a successful [joke] game, work better as a team, and learn to love again.
Murphy and Tibitoski break down how a young studio can create development processes and studio culture by drawing on old-school industry mentors, indie pals and the team’s communal-gut instincts.
It’s a good talk that clearly details a small team’s production methods and studio culture can be positively informed by each other as they develop. We’ve taken the liberty of embedding the video of “There and Dad Again – The Octodad: Dadliest Catch Postmortem” above, but you can also watch it here for free on the GDC Vault.
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