Preview of SimHQ's DW interview with Jamie Carlson

[Der Teddy Bar]

OneShot: Do you have any development “stories� while making any of your four games which you could share with our readers?

Jamie: Well, the story of how we got into the business may interest some who don’t know us very well.

Sonalysts is a pretty sizable company (about 400 employees) which is pretty uncommon among game developers. But we were best known for our work with the U.S. Navy in simulation and training, so getting into the game industry was initially quite difficult (the common dilemma of getting that “first game out� so that your company can finally break into the gaming space and be taken seriously).

Early in 1995, we were set on trying to break into the commercial software development world. Most of our efforts were concentrated on the commercial training/corporate marketing CD-ROM arena. One of our sales/marketing staff basically just made a “cold call� to Paul Grace at Electronic Arts and arranged to meet with Paul at upcoming E3 in LA. At the time, Paul was the VP in charge of EA’s Jane’s Combat Simulation division. Although we had no commercial gaming experience, Paul found Sonalysts interesting because of our many years of supporting the U.S. Navy as a defense contractor. Luckily for us, Paul had been thinking about updating the sub games they had done a few years earlier – 688 Attack Sub and Seawolf.

Where the story gets interesting is that we’re not sure Paul’s interest in Sonalysts would have gone anywhere, if we hadn’t arranged for Paul and some of his folks to go out on a 688 Class sub for a day. Paul was eager to go on the sub ride, so he had to come visit us. That first meeting occurred in March of 1995, we signed a contract to develop a script for a submarine simulation game in July of that year, and went into full development on what became “688(I) Hunter/Killer� in the October time frame. Initially, we told EA how we were going to improve and update 688 Attack Sub, but Paul told us to "…start new and make the most realistic submarine game ever." He later amended his statement to add the phrase "… that’s fun to play." The game came out in June of 1997 and received a great response from the sim community and the gaming media. All things tolds it was a tremendous success for us and launched what is now the Sonalysts Combat Simulations brand.