A Portrait of Papyrus Software Group and “Overnight Success”

There is an adage in the old Hollywood that says, “There is no such thing as overnight success.” The same is true for software publishers. Almost every software hit and every successful company is full of people who have paid their dues and learned their hard-earned lessons elsewhere. Even when we consider one of the fastest growing design houses in the business, Papyrus Software Group, the excitement didn’t appear overnight. In this company profile we take you to the office of the company before you even have to say, “Who are these guys?” and “Where did they come from?”

A Stable For Workhorses

Papyrus Software, the company that developed Indy 500: The Simulation for Electronic Arts and is about to spring the revolutionary IndyCar Racing onto store shelves, has offices in a building with a lot of history. Originally, the building was a meat-packing plant that served Boston, and all of the plant’s drayage was handled by their state-of-the-art delivery system – horse-powered vehicles. Most of the plant’s activity took place downstairs on the main floor and, in an advance that was fairly rare for its time, the horses which pulled the packing plant’s wagons were stabled on the upper stories constructed of suspended floors. To this day, there are rings inset within the walls where the old drayage horses were tethered.

This may seem somewhat appropriate when you understand the history of the company. The company makes most of its money out of the limelight performing programming tasks and testing suites that many other developers avoid. That wasn’t the intent when Dave Kaemmer and Omar Khudari formed the company, but is seems to have worked out well.

Dave and Omar formed Papyrus when they left the prestigious educational publisher Tom Snyder Productions, after a reorganization. Readers are most likely to remember TSP for the early Sub Mission game (where gamers who failed more than three times had to send in for new disks and pay an additional fee in order to try again) and Infocom’s disappointing Infocomics experiment.

The year was 1987, so Dave and Omar did what any sane-minded programming team would do, they called Electronic Arts. After all, EA was big enough that they should have lots of job openings. They talked to Dave Grady about the possibility. Grady filled their minds with the possibility of an outside artist relationship with the successful publishing house. Dave and Omar hopped a plane to the West Coast, fleshed out an idea on the plane and, after presenting it, got a small advance for a script treatment. Then, much to their chagrin, EA rejected the script upon its submission.

Dave was undaunted, but didn’t manage to get the early design for Indy 500: The Simulation approved until January of 1988. Omar, Concerned about paying the bills, immediately began consulting on computer software of all kinds and managed to keep the two partners going. In fact, the consulting business grew so much faster than the game portion of their business, that is still functions as 75% of Papyrus’ business to the present day. Both partners chuckle, though, about how many clients of the consulting business perceived Papyrus as a much bigger enterprise than it really was. Rich Hillemann, not a vice president at Electronic Arts, was the only client to actually visit them in their workspace when they were working out of their apartments.

According to Omar Khudari, the consulting business is still what pays the bills and has the added advantage of building a critical mass of talent around the unglamorous “workhorse” projects that can be borrowed for the more glamorous “thoroughbred” projects on the game side. Papyrus really likes the way their company has grown because the near-anonymous consulting business is repeat business based upon the predictability and professionalism of Papyrus’ working relationships with their client base. This provides a solid and manageable income stream, in stark contrast to the risky, hit-driven nature of the game business.

Arty-Facts

In many ways, Papyrus’ name is perfectly appropriate for a state-of-the-art technology company with plans to venture further into game publishing. The reference to the ancient writing medium means the company is ready to preserve the old techniques that work, while their vision still looks toward new techniques for the future. For example, their partners hired Dan Sherlis to run the publishing portion of the company in 1992. His charter is to turn the company into a full-scale software publisher with all of the cash, creative control and credit (in terms of recognition) that such status has to offer. He expects the company to reach and stabilize (no pun intended) at a point where they can publish five new products per year. Yet, the company still intended to enjoy certain classic developer/publisher relations like their current Sega CD project (they are developing Access’ Links product for the console machine) and certain, as yet unannounced 3DO work.

As always, Dave Kammer focuses 100 percent of his attention on technology and the creation of games. Omar directs the consulting group, and Dan tries to move the company toward becoming a full-service publisher. As for future plans, they would still like to publish the game that EA originally rejected, and they are experimenting with new ways to use their advanced texture-mapped technology in other genres. Frankly, I don’t think it will take long before people begin talking about Papyrus’ “overnight” success.

Papyrus are an illustration of what many casual gamers often miss. By paying attention to the publisher of the games rather than looking at the designers and developers, the casual gamer sometimes misses seeing the companies who are on the rise. We hope this portrait of a potential “overnight success” will help gamers look just a little close at those credits in the manual and the fine print on the game boses. It is definitely exciting to watch software companies forging their own future.