QUOTE | “We have to accept that, if we start ten projects, four are probably going to fail. I don’t know the exact numbers, of course, but that’s not a failure as a company, and it’s not a failure for the people working on it; it’s a part of our process now.” - Incoming Paradox CEO Ebba Ljungerud says the company has been too slow to cancel games in the past.
QUOTE | “Controversial is good as long as it is grounded in ideas that are true and that are also are not harmful to anyone. We were trying to do that.” - 11-bit Studios’ marketing director Patryk Grzeszczuk shares what the studio learned from the struggles of Beat Cop.
QUOTE | “While we’ve never charged money for prize crates in Forza Motorsport 7, their presence in the game has continued to be a source of controversy. The overwhelming feedback has been that this system feels out of place in the game.” - Turn 10 studio head Alan Hartman explains why the Forza Motorsport developer plans to have prize crates out of the game this winter.
QUOTE | “No matter how much experience you have... it really is impossible to know which games are going to become hits and which ones will just be footnotes.” - Tyrone Rodriguez, founder and president of Cave Story and Binding of Isaac: Rebirth publisher Nicalis, says he is frequently surprised by which games succeed and which ones flop.
QUOTE | “If it’s acceptable in sports, I’m unclear why it wouldn’t be acceptable in gaming.” - David Ismailer, president of NBA 2K publisher 2K, doesn’t expect any broader pushback against game publishers moving into esports betting after a Supreme Court decision legalizing the practice in the US.
QUOTE | “I think it was generally a lot of inexperience all around, and not knowing too much of what needed to be done, or what had to be done and how it needed to be done.” - MidBoss creative director John James suggests the root of the problem at the 2064: Read Only Memories studio earlier this year, when founder Matt Conn was accused of a litany of worker abuses, including sexual harassment.
QUOTE | “What we see a lot is that people have good intentions to bring diversity into games, but it’s not always successful due to a lack of having someone to give consultancy.” - Pixel Punk Studio’s Tiani Pixel says there’s a lot of subtlety and study required for developers to depict marginalized communities they aren’t members of themselves.
STAT | $5 billion to $8 billion - Bloomberg’s estimated value of Fortnite publisher and Unreal Engine creator Epic Games.
QUOTE | “We’re looking at key franchises in terms of how we can deliver cross-platform play in a similar way that Fortnite has, especially some of our titles that have a broad and diverse player base.” - Electronic Arts VP of investor relations Chris Evenden says the company is open to making games like Battlefield V work across platforms.
QUOTE | “We’ve seen the growth of Japanese IP on Steam on PC; that never existed before. And it surfaces across other formats as well because gaming is now a social entity. You have your friends lists and you see what your friends are playing and it encourages you to dive back in to the games you maybe missed before or games you stopped playing.” - Sega Europe executive vice president John Clark said bringing games like Yakuza to PC has bumped their sales on consoles as well.
STAT | 25% - Amount of game developers who complained about crunch, overtime, or poor working conditions in the GamesIndustry.biz Careers Survey this year. That’s down from 73% last year.