"My motto on Spore was, 'overdeliver late.' It drives producers mad, but it means cool stuff comes." "I take a long time to do things, but I try to do a really good job when they finally come in," Hecker said.
So what's taken so long? Hecker pointed to a number of reasons, one of them a slowness somewhat fundamental to how he works. "My motto on Spore was, 'overdeliver late.' It drives producers mad, but it means cool stuff comes" I'm going to be OK, which is one of the things that helps mitigate the anxiety a little bit. "So I'm not going to starve even if the game sells zero copies on Steam. "I can program a computer and I live in the Bay Area," Hecker said. That said, his apprehension is not entirely-and possibly not even primarily-financial in nature. And while the 24,000 copies he sold directly through the game's site like that helped pad the coffers, Hecker said his savings are now basically gone. That nest egg helped fund SpyParty's development, as did the decision to sell beta access to SpyParty for $15 about five or six years ago, before Steam launched its own Early Access program and made the concept ubiquitous. He'd been saving up his money to go indie when a round of layoffs accelerated the timeline on that move. Before starting full-time work on SpyParty, Hecker was an engineer and designer at Electronic Arts/Maxis on Spore.