What you need to know
- Two veteran Arkane developers have announced the formation of a new studio, WolfEye.
- WolfEye's first game will be revealed during The Game Awards 2019.
- The small studio with employees working remotely around the world hopes to make big games with the right focus.
Former Arkane developers Raphael Colantonio and Julien Roby have announced WolfEye Studios (via GamesIndustry.biz), a new development studio with a team of employees around the world. Its first game is set to be revealed during The Game Awards 2019 on December 12th.
The studio isn't saying too much about the new game just yet, but Roby mentioned in an interview that the team likes games that "respond to player actions, where the world reacts to what you are doing, and the experience is owned by the player." Both developers lamented the industry's fixation on graphical power and how it can detract from the actual gameplay experience. Despite this, Colantonio and Roby still want players to know that WolfEye will put effort into its game's graphics, it's just that they want to focus on good art direction instead of hyper-realism, which is a point emphasized on the studio's website.
The WolfEye team is comprised of under 20 employees who work remotely across the globe. This flexibility is meant to be one of its greatest assets.
"Our goal is not to grow the company too big, because we like the fact that when we talk about something on Monday, on Wednesday you already have the thing in the game because it's easy to broadcast information to the team," Roby said. "Everybody feels involved in the project. When you have a team of 200 people, it often ends up with people being at the very end of the information chain and they don't understand why they are doing what they're doing and they don't feel they have any impact on the project."
The world of Karnaca awaits
Dishonored 2 is one of the best immersive sims out there, and it's fairly cheap on Amazon right now if you haven't played it yet. Though WolfEye says you shouldn't expect a carbon copy of Dishonored as its next game, the studio does want to focus on immersive simulations with bold art directions.
