Sucker Punch co-founder Brian Fleming on developing Ghost of Tsushima: “Everything broke”

Ghost of Tsushima became one of the biggest hits of 2020, and now Sucker Punch co-founder reflects on the process of creating the game and the challenges the studio faced on its way.

Brian Fleming

Brian Fleming answered questions during the GDC Showcase AMA. Here’s what he said about the development of Ghost of Tsushima:

• The studio has been constantly cutting features and different elements of the game from day one to three months before shipping. “Scalpel is one of the most important tools,” Fleming said.
• Sucker Punch realized its responsibility in terms of cultural representation. That’s why they also wanted to get SIE’s Head of Indies Initiative Shuhei Yoshida’s blessing before starting the production.
• “inFamous was an open world game, but it’s kind of a small open world, and we were going to a large open world, and it destabilized every aspect of our game-making toolset,” Fleming said about the biggest challenge the studio faced.
• World-building and modeling also became a huge challenge: “We went from 100 tiles to 1200 tiles. The tiles were four times bigger. Everything broke, and so the biggest challenge was the journey to getting to a point where we had solid earth under us again.”
• Sucker Punch also spent a lot of time creating Ghost of Tsushima’s combat system, working on many different iterations and prototypes. The studio has been polishing this aspect of the game during the whole development process.

Brian Fleming also reminisced about his journey and path into the game industry, as well as keeping the team motivated and his role as a leader. You can watch the video interview below.