Shooting Star
Starbreeze CEO Johan Kristiansson discusses project cancellation and the bright lights of Sweden's games industry
Since its inception in 1998, Sweden-based Starbreeze Studios has worked on a string of licensed IP, the most recent of which were the critically well received, The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena and The Darkness.
Until recently the company was working on two EA projects, one confirmed as a game based on Robert Ludlam's Bourne licence, the other known only as RedLime and rumoured to be a new title in the highly regarded Syndicate series. One of those projects was recently cancelled with industry speculation and an announcement by an EA spokesperson pointing to the Bourne game.
Here, company CEO Johan Kristiansson talks about the upside of project cancellation, working on other people's licences and why we're unlikely to see a Starbreeze title on any handheld platform in the foreseeable future.
[laughs] Well, here's an interesting question! I'm not able to elaborate on the press release at this stage, unfortunately. There seems to be a lot of speculation in the media on which of the two projects have been cancelled but I'm not able to comment on that at the moment.
I can say that although we've had one project cancelled we're actually in a pretty good position. We've had additional funds allocated to the other project and we have high hopes for that project. Also we've not had to release any staff since almost everyone will be busy with the other project for a while.
Project cancellation can be pretty painful but with the situation we're in right now we're quite happy with how it's turned out. Also, I think that this is the way that the industry as a whole is going now, focusing on fewer projects but with bigger budgets. Sometimes you don't know what that big thing will be from the outset but after a while you can start to see where the money should be allocated.
It's always been an option for us to do our own internal IP and we didn't really set out with the strategy to only work on external licences, it's just worked out like that over the last few years. Basically, we've received better offers and bigger budgets for the licensed IP work than we have for the internal IPs that we've pitched. But we still have a lot of ideas for internal IPs and we may well look to do that in the future.
It does seem, however, that as you get later in to a console cycle it becomes increasingly difficult to convince publishers to take the risk on new IPs, especially with the general turmoil that the industry has experienced over the last year or so.
I think also that licensed IPs can prove to be very fertile ground for creative achievements. Something like the Godfather movies, for example, they're based on books and are considered by some to be some of the best movies ever made. Or like the Batman Dark Knight movie and [Rocksteady's] Arkham Asylum game, excellent products based on a well exploited IP. There's certainly scope for talented people to do great work based on existing licences.
It's important to understand that there are always boundaries for creative work whether you're working on your own IP or someone else's. Those boundaries are necessary in order for you to be creative AND productive.
We're investing a lot in the development of our internal engine development right now and we have expanded our engine team to about 15 people. We've established a more aggressive plan for upgrading the engine and so we're making a lot of changes to it. A starting point for this work has been to split up the engine into more discreet modules which allows us to do more ambitious work with each module.
However, I think that if you're looking to have an engine that can be licensed out to third parties it needs to be more general purpose than our current engine and it also needs to be very well documented and user friendly. We're experienced in using our engine and believe that it's very well tailored to the kinds of games that we make. If we were to license it externally it would require a significant investment and it's not something that we're actively working on right now. It is a long term option though, of course, but this far in to the current console cycle it doesn't feel all that attractive an option to be looking to enter the market with a new licensed engine.
We've always been proud of our audio work and feel that it's a real strong point of the company. I think our audio guys do a fantastic job. Our success in that area is probably more due to what a few talented individuals are achieving rather than any particular superior tech.