We recently got a chance to speak to Marcus Lehto, Halo co-creator and the man behind V1 Interactive and their
upcoming RTS/FPS hybrid Disintegration. When asked about working with publisher Private Division, Lehto revealed that Disintegration had been pitched to some of gaming's biggest publishers, but wasn't picked as they weren't interesting in publishing games with a mid-tier budget.
"When we were building the game it was just myself and two engineers who I was contracting - they were still in school at that time - building a prototype for the game. I pitched it around to all my old colleagues and friends from places like Xbox, hanging out with Phil Spencer and talking to him about this game. At that time Microsoft, Sony, Activision etc didn’t really have an appetite for anything other than either a very small indie title or, just going all the way to the other end of the spectrum to a giant triple-A game," Lehto explained.
"So there was nothing in between - they didn’t really have the budget or interest in working on something like that. That’s when I met up with one of my old colleagues that I had worked with for many years at Bungie - Alan Murray - who had just joined this new publisher that was starting to form at that time, that was an offshoot of Take Two. And he was like “I think you should pitch the game idea to some of my folks that I’m working with right now”. So we did, and hey, look at where we’re at right now! It turned out great, because there was this mutual understanding that they wanted to build this mid-tier “small team, big idea” project, with a modest budget that made sense."
"[Private Division] took a leap of faith with me, believing that I A: could build a studio and draw in the talent that I needed it to, and B: could actually execute on this idea that we presented. I’m happy we were able to come through on that side of things and actually build not only a studio but a project that we’re all real excited about and very passionate about, and want the rest of the community to get into play as soon as possible."
It sounds like things have gone well since V1 Interactive teamed up with Private Division, with the publisher letting Lehto and his studio make the decisions they wanted to, and take the game in the direction they thought was best.
"We’ve been really happy with Private Division and the way that they respect the creative approach that we’re taking with the game and they want to be a publisher, they don’t want to have fingers in every little corner of what we’re doing with the project. And that’s real important to us to feel like we have that mutual trust in one another to do the right thing. So that’s worked great to this point."
From what we've seen of the game's campaign, it appears that they've made it work well -
you can check out our preview here.
Disintegration releases for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC in 2020.
ZWAME Jogos: Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth já se encontra disponível para a PlayStation 5. Podem ler a nossa análise no Portal Jogos.