South Park Creators Approached Obsidian for Video Game Project

The leading executive working at South Park: The Game at developer Obsidian says that the inception of the project was unusual because his company was approached directly by the South Park license holders and not by publisher THQ, as it is customary.

Speaking to Game Informer, Feargus Urquhart, who is the Chief Executive Officer at Obsidian, stated, “When the South Park project came up, it was kind of a big surprise. What was interesting about it was we were contacted directly by South Park. Normally, how it works, is usually that a publisher calls us and say, ‘hey, we have a licence, we want you to make a game.’”

He added, “But this time, it was the licence holder themselves. And it was exciting because it’s great to work on licenced product, but to actually be working initially straight for the licenser, it meant that the guys who it was their baby were the ones who were going to be telling what they want. And on top of it, it was great once we started working with them was finding out how much into games they were.”

Another big step for the project was a meeting between the developers at Obsidian and Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the two man team behind South Park, where the two parties discovered that they had similar interests, including a long term obsession with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

The first challenge was determining whether Obsidian could create a game that looks like South Park, something that the in-house Dungeon Siege III engine apparently can do.

With the question of looks settled the two sides decided that collaboration was a good idea and began working on the game proper, with Parker and Stone creating most of the dialog and story while Obsidian put together the role playing game mechanics.

South Park: The Game will be launched at some point during 2012.