14 DAY TRIAL // Team Bondi might not exist anymore as a development studio but it’s former leader says that one of the lessons that other companies can take from it is that research and development of proprietary technology can push the development time up significantly.
Brendan McNamara, who was the founder of Team Bondi and lead development on L.A. Noire, told the Official PlayStation Magazine that, “It’s a huge game – probably too big. The map’s massive, and so that’s probably my fault. We had to build a new process to do that. We were a brand-new studio – we had brand-new tools, new technology. We have tools that allow you to build cities now, but we had to build that kind of stuff and make it work.”
The developer says that the technology needed to deliver the 1940’s Los Angeles was extensive and that MotionScan was just the most visible element of it.
McNamara also talked about the research done in order to get the details as close to real life as possible, saying, “Newspaper research, guys going over to LA and doing research on the buildings, taking photos, getting all the resources together. We were quite a small studio – 16 people or something – and we had to have all this material so we could start building stuff.”
The developer says that more than one year and a half of the development process was spent just researching the minutia of history.
L.A. Noire was launched in early 2010 after Rockstar helped Team Bondi with the final leg of development and achieved some decent sales and a good critical reception.
Despite the moderate success Team Bondi closed down soon after and there’s little chance that Rockstar will use the same universe or the same technology for another similar video games.
Rockstar will launch the open world GTA V during 2012.