It is now almost one year after the Inside Crytek interview series debuted over at Crytek's MyCrysis community portal. How time flies! Anyway... here's the seventeenth Q&A, in full, for your reading pleasure. The interviewee/Frankfurter Erik Staub is new to gaming industry, having been in the TV and advertising business for 20 years before joining Crytek. He is currently working as a Producer on marketing and merchandising plan for Crysis 2, and enjoys dodging release date questions whenever thrown at him. Thanks to Crysis fans for the effort, though!

Today sees another addition to our "Inside Crytek" series. This is a series of Q&A's with different members of the Crytek team, where they answer questions on all sorts of topics. These are not just ordinary interviews though. Once their intro has been posted you get the opportunity to ask them your questions!

This time we are speaking with Erik.

What do you do at Crytek?

I’m a Producer working on Crysis 2.

Why did you want to work in the games industry and how did you get started and do you have any tips for people wanting to get started in the industry?

After 20 years of TV and advertising it seemed like the best industry to go to, since the gaming industry is still young and inventive and still driven by innovation.

What ever it is you like to do, try to become the best at it, and then apply at CRYTEK!

Why Crytek?

Why go for second best, if the best are located in your home town?

What are the best and worst parts of your job?

The best part is working with this team, the worst part is politics that don’t have anything to do with the quality of the games we make.

What are you working on at the minute?

Marketing and merchandising plan.

What types of games do you like, and what's your favorite game of all time?

I love third and first person shooters, Metal Gear Solid on PlayStation 1 is the best game of all times for me, followed by Crysis.

What do you enjoy doing when you're not at work?

Spending time with my family and cooking.

Fan Q&A

So, you said that you like cooking... what meal is you specialty?

Creole Cuisine in general, the secret of cooking is to know your ingredients and blend them together like a painting, ever flavor and color at the right time.

Can you give some examples of what your work is? Working on marketing? Things like making commercials etc.

Well, marketing is to prepare a product for a market, reach out to the customer and give the customer the feeling that the product is "need to have" item. Advertising means to tell the customer what the product is about and create even more of a sense of desire for the product. I start out very unromantic and neutral by analyzing the market, the core customers and the competition; then I take those ingredients and cook a fine marketing meal out of it.

And for desert, there’s the merchandising :)

But no, I don’t make commercials, I see to it that good agencies and film production companies make then as good as it possibly gets.

As a producer, do you have any creative input or hands-on creation of things in the game?

Yes; to a certain extent, but I try to keep it in the background. My responsibility lies more in controlling quality and enabling artists and directors to achieve the quality. It’s a team effort and a producer tries to reduce the ego.

How many months before releasing a game do you start working on the merchandising and marketing stuff?

This is not bound to a date, you start planning and thinking about merchandising and marketing from the beginning on. It’s just not a huge load of stuff in the beginning of a game production, as the project grows and more elements of the game are being created and the story progresses you try to come up with ways and details to reveal and a timeframe in which this can happen. At some point of course if a release date is set, you start planning to this point.

Do you feel the original Crysis could have had more promotional material circulated?

I don’t think Crysis was short on promotion. I was not involved in the project back then but I think the hype that was created was too focused on the technical superiority and the fact that you would need a new super-computer to play it, well I had a two year old PC at that time, and it played Crysis fine, not on high-spec but still looking better than any other game on the market, and most important, IT WAS F***ING AWESOME FUN.

What's your favorite project you've worked on in the past?

Past – Present – Future: CRYSIS 2

Ever thought/were asked to participate in a horror movie?

YES, I was involved in a few SF and horror projects, the last time I got in contact with the genre I was asked to direct a vampire film in France, but the production company didn’t pursue the project further. This happens a lot in the film industry.

Do you think sex sells? (even though Crytek have a sex-free history) [GTA IV 18+]

I know that sex sells, but you need a franchise or a story that fits, or sometimes a product isn’t good enough and needs a sales boost. Crysis is a great game, it doesn’t need sex to sell it.

What products did you promote?

The list is very long you can check it out on my LinkedIn profile: www.linkedin.com/pub/erik-staub/10/56a/7b0

COMING SOON

Is that a question? If it is, and I guess you just want to know when we release Crysis 2. I honestly don’t know an exact date, we are trying to create the best game ever, and this, you can’t just nail to a date and yell it out to everybody, what if we think we need another month to make it even better, everybody would be disappointed by us not keeping the promised date, but no-one recognizes the fact that we are doing this to give you fans out there an even better game, once we are certain to what date we can give you guys the best possible Crysis 2, we will tell you.

What exactly does your job involve?

I can only give a few examples, since the job is rather organic in nature and it involves many things and sometime unexpected tasks are added. I produce results, this means I create a framework in which a creative team can go about their creativity and doesn’t need to worry about anything other than creating. I oversee this process and jump in whenever there’s the need for anything the team needs help with. And if I do my job right the team creates a great game, and if not it’s my fault, sometimes life isn’t fair, but that’s the way it is.

When working on design, whether it's sound or other, do you ever use a Mac? Or is your work strictly Windows PC -based?

Basically everything is Windows-based, even though some people, including me, also work on a Mac when necessary, but in a company the size of CRYTEK it is very important to have a consistent network. We have an awesome IT department, and they need to keep the network safe and running, and that is much easier with everything on running Windows.

Are you going to officially support Windows 7 and fix some issues a fair deal of Windows 7 users have been dealing with?

I know Crysis 2 will run on Windows 7, but I don’t know what issues you are talking about. I trust our R&D team to take care of these things; I am not involved in the software engineering part.

Do you listen to music when working?

I listen to music whenever I get the chance to do so, but I have to be in a lot of meetings every day, when I need an acoustic coffee in the morning my favorite wakeup call is a song called COMBUSTION by a Swedish band called MESHUGGAH.

If so what type/artist do you prefer to listen to when working?

Other than that I like to listen to Internet radio, mostly a station called Whisperings, solo piano music, to keep me calm.

A big thank you to Erik for answering so many questions as in depth as he has. Please check back next week for another Inside Crytek Article!

-MyCrysis Team

Inside Crytek - Erik Staub – Crysis 2 Producer
Inside Crytek - Erik Staub – Community Answers!