Oshkosh native Timothy Gerritsen got his start in video games as lead designer and project manager for the state of Oregon-based game company Dynamix in 1992.

He worked for several other game companies across the U.S. before returning to Wisconsin to help start the Madison-based video game development company Human Head in 1998. He was chief executive officer of Human Head in 2006 when he left the company to help start Big Rooster.

He and his co-founders -- visual director Rowan Atalla and animation director Jeff Dewitt -- have said their aim is to create a different kind of video game company, with a focus on reducing the high turnover rate endemic to the industry by fostering a better working environment for their team.

Big Rooster got off to a shaky start after it opened in April 2007, as a contract with Activision to build a game based on the Talisman board game fell through early in the development process. But Gerritsen said the company is back on track, and Big Rooster is working on games for the Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS platforms, as well as some animated television shows for network and cable TV.

Q: You 've said that you want Big Rooster to be a different kind of game company. What do you want to do differently?

A: Our goal was to create a company that really rewarded creativity and allowed for career growth and personal growth at the same time. Not the typical case where there 's a very high level of burnout. The International Game Developers Association has published reports on trends in the industry that showed that a high percentage of the work force leaves the industry after five years, and even more after 10 years. So there 's not a lot of long-term management skill or veteran experience in our industry.

A lot of people in the game industry work 20-hour days for a long time during crunch period and really burn themselves out. And we 've found that when that happens, productivity decreases markedly over time. So, by maintaining a strict eight hours, get out, have a life mentality we maintain a high level of productivity.

A big part of it is just taking realistic milestones into account, not biting off more than we can chew where possible, and understanding the process to the point where we can really gauge how long something is going to take.

Q: You 've said that the current state of the video game market makes this an ideal time for independent developers. Why is that?

A: Whenever there 's a new generation of hardware -- meaning Xbox going to Xbox 360, PlayStation 2 going to PlayStation 3, Nintendo GameCube going to the Nintendo Wii -- it levels the playing field because you have a new set of hardware and a new set of assumptions. Old players in the industry have to reassert themselves, and new players get the opportunity to come in and prove themselves. Also, the new hardware has created a new distribution model: direct-downloadable games for consoles. (These are games that can be bought and downloaded directly to a game console via the Internet.)

Direct downloading has become a proven, viable business model, whereas five years ago it was still largely unknown and very risky. We can reach out directly to the customers without the requirement of a publisher middleman.

Companies that may have been well-established a generation ago may be set in their ways on that old technology, and may not be equipped to handle the change in technology that 's come upon them.

Q: Do you think Madison is a business-friendly place for companies like yours?

A: Yes and no. It certainly is a very friendly technology town. There 's a lot of highly skilled people to be hired in the local community. Even the lay community is very technically savvy. That certainly benefits us.

Still, I remember back with Human Head we were once denied a sublet in a building when the lessor found out we were a video game company, because they didn 't understand and didn 't want "that element, " or whatever they called it. But we haven 't run into that since then.

Now whenever I tell people I make video games for a living, usually the response is, "Hey, I 've got a great idea, can I tell you about it? " So there 's a lot of interest in the community.

And now that there 's the Wisconsin Film Tax Credit, which also applies to video games, we 're starting to see support from government. People are starting to understand that it 's an entertainment business and it 's a worldwide business. We sell products everywhere.

Q: What are your plans for growing the company?

A: We just opened a technology office in Austin, Texas, with Paul Masters, who started at Dynamix a week before I did, as technical director. That was a big success for us. We think it will open new avenues for us. It gives us the opportunity to create staffing in another location in case people we want to hire don 't want to move to Madison. Everything 's online now anyway, so we operate the office virtually, with videoconferencing, telephone, e-mail and direct Internet connections between our servers.

We do want to grow, we do want to become a major developer in the country -- which would make us a large developer locally as well -- but we 're taking a very slow, conservative growth plan to it. The three of us owners ' ultimate goal is to build a company that will succeed us.

I would like the company to be one of the driving development houses in five to 10 years, maybe not the No. 1, it 's a large enough industry that you can have several driving companies, but I want us to be a company that people look to for innovation and high-quality products.

Q: All the talk about tech these days seems to be about "convergence. " Do you see that in the game industry?

A: Yeah, and it makes it more expensive and difficult for us to make games, quite frankly. As stuff converges, people have higher expectation levels. With higher expectations come higher costs and more skill sets that we have to bring in.

Back when I started, a company 's artist was usually somebody who wasn 't necessarily an artist but kind of understood the art tool and was able to put together a blob that sort of looked like a person. Nowadays, you have guys working on just the shoe and it 's so detailed it looks like a real shoe with laces and rubber soles.

The skills required are just mind boggling and the number of people we have to hire is much higher than ever before. It 's actually ironic. (Video games) have found more wide-scale acceptance, and yet the total number of sales for the top products hasn 't increased.

The total number of sales overall has increased, so the industry continues to grow, but a top hit today doesn 't necessarily sell more units than a top hit from five or 10 years ago.

There 's more choice out there and games that reach different audiences, which is a good thing, but the dirty secret of the current generation of hardware is that it costs two to three times as much to make a game now, while the potential audience is exactly the same as it was before.

If we make $5 million off of a game, that 's great, that 's awesome, but for a huge company like Electronic Arts, $5 million is a huge failure. A $200 million movie is only about two hours long. So they 're creating about two hours of content. For a $20 million game, we need to present 12 or 15 hours of content -- interactive content -- and the visuals are getting to be as good as the movies.

TIMOTHY GERRITSEN

Executive director and co-owner of Big Rooster

Age: 40

Business address: 2690 Research Park Drive, Fitchburg

Web site: www.big-rooster.com

Employees: 14

Family: Married with three children, ages 5, 11 and 13