Unveiled: Streamline Production business

Alexander and Hector Fernandez have unveiled their new business - Streamline Production - a company aimed at managing the process of producing videogames by overseeing a company's relationship with external outsourcers.

"Ten years ago, [the videogame industry] didn't really outsource - but today it's a part of the core development, so being able to offer developers the ability to access expertise and knowledge, and to be able to deliver it on time... that's what we're doing," Hector Fernandez explained to GamesIndustry.biz.

"What we're offering is basically our production framework that we've built up over the last ten years - all the production processes and methodologies that meant we were able to deliver on time, the first time."

The business follows the closure of the Streamline Studios facility in The Netherlands last year - a situation brought about by the cancellation of a large number of client projects as the economic downturn hit the games industry.

"We had an overwhelming amount of supportive response from the community, the government, other co-developers," he said. "It really was a smooth transition, and since then we've been in the process of taking a look at the marketplace to see what's really developing.

"I think the blood-letting of talent that we have every five years, combined with the need to drive down the cost of production, has effectively pointed towards the fact that we need production designers in this industry - it's a role that you have in film, but not really in videogames in terms of people who actually design how the pipeline works, or how the production is going to be carried out."

Streamline Production has already worked on a high-profile project with William Morris, 20th Century Fox and Coke Zero on the biggest movie of all time, Avatar - with more projects already in the pipeline.

"What we did was to take the marketing plan, managed the vendors and set up the process that could leverage assets from the film world, the commercial television world, the game world and the social network world to create a uniquely transmedia experience." he said. "We made sure that it all worked smoothly.

"And we're currently working on two projects that we'll be able to announce in the future - it's exciting stuff."

The full interview with Hector Fernandez, in which he explains in more detail the role of production management and creative execution in the videogames industry, will be published in the next few weeks.