The Making of S.T.A.L.K.E.R

Would you tackle a project of the same magnitude again?

Anton Bolshakov: Yes, the team has successfully completed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. To us it is a mountain peak climbed. Now the team is well-built and professional. Through the development process we worked out proper management, planning and projecting. Now we can make, and do make, no less complex projects, however with much more predictably in terms of timing.

What's in the pipeline for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? Is it the sort of game you can release expansions or content updates for, say new multiplayer maps, or will you just be fixing bugs?

Anton Bolshakov: We're preparing some next S.T.A.L.K.E.R. announcements for the upcoming E3. We will be happy to share all the interesting details during the E3 in July.

To let you know, we have already released the MP SDK and now work on SP SDK. We do a lot to improve the MP part, such as optimising the traffic, remote control function, anti-cheating... We're preparing a big update with a new game mode - Freeplay, with no story tasks, including only the A-life driven ones, and where the goal is to gain ranks, climb up in rankings, so as to become the best s.t.a.l.k.e.r. in the Zone.

Also we keep fixing the bugs found and release patches.

A very good interview which includes a bit of post mortem in it.

The Making of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., part one
The Making of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., part two