Rubin: “Games are becoming harder to make”

Infinity Ward’s exec producer worries for smaller studios.

Call Of Duty: Ghosts’ executive producer has highlighted the rising costs and increasing difficulty presented by the AAA market for developers, and even for Infinity Ward.

“It’s a scary thing, and I’ll take my Call Of Duty hat off for a minute here, but games are becoming harder to make, more expensive to make,” Mark Rubin said in a video interview with GameInformer.

“I feel like smaller studios are having trouble – I can’t speak for them but I would think – are having trouble making games that fill the big AAA market because they’re harder to do. It is kind of a bummer that games are getting so hard and difficult to make.”

“People want better and better graphics, they want more realistic looking art assets and that comes at a cost and that’s a hard thing to have to deal with.”

He added that it “bothered” him to think that games were trying to chase Call Of Duty’s success, using the example that he loved MMOs, but wouldn’t want to make a World Of Warcraft clone.

During the interview Rubin, who has been executive producer at the studio since August 200, also spoke about some of the challenges about developing for current and next-generation platforms at the same time. The game is due for release on both PlayStation consoles, both Xbox consoles and PC later this year, and Treyarch is developing a version for Wii U.

 

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New Hitman game teased by developer IO Interactive confirmed

The director of Hitman: Absolution has teased a few new details on the next entry in the stealth-based shooter series, currently in development at Square Enix Montreal.

Absolution was released this week and was developed by IO Interactive. However, the studio is now working on a new project outside of the Hitman universe.

Speaking to OPM, Tore Blystad drew comparisons in the shift in developers for Hitman to the Call of Duty franchise, which shifts annually between Infinity Ward and Treyarch.

“It’s like Treyarch and Infinity Ward,” said Blystad. “You have an IP that has been developed. They will feed off each other, as well as some things that stand out. I think with these big franchises it takes a long time to develop just one game. If you can, work a little bit in parallel at least and help each other out”.

He went on to reveal the company’s philosophy behind developing the Hitman games going forward, likening it to the working of Hollywood blockbusters such as Aliens. Furthermore, it seems like we can expect to see Agent 47 from a new perspective for his next outing.

“We’ve been talking about these similarities to some of the big movie franchise like Aliens, where everyone’s doing it their own way. Every time someone gets their hands on a franchise they do something different. So rather than doing the same thing again you get another take on the character from a fresh perspective.”

“There’s a lot of these problems you encounter with these sort of productions, some of them are really fundamental problems, or they have a big effect on the game – like how you do a mechanic for instance. If you change a mechanic too much then the whole gameplay will be modified”.

Despite the change in developers, Blystad assured gamers that it won’t compromise the franchise’s reputation, as both IO and Square will be in communication throughout development.

“Well there are talks between us and of course it has to be somewhat in sync but it’s the first time you could say Hitman has gone out of the house.”

“Luckily it’s with someone we know. Some of the key developers came from IO and have been working on previous games so it’s not like it’s in completely new hands”.

Source: PSU