Saber Interactive chief creative officer Tim Willits has opened up about the current state of AAA game development. He also detailed the studio’s approach to production and budgeting.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
A lot of AAA developers nowadays over-score their games instead of just focusing on the core, Willits told IGN in a new interview. He believes that one of the problems is that they try to follow trends and add certain things from recently released titles, forgetting what actually makes their own project fun in the first place.
Saber, however, has a “core belief that what you do every second and what happens when you push these buttons and that core gameplay loop is so critical. So we focus on the moment-to-moment interaction in the gameplay and the feeling you have.”
While Warhammer 40k: Space Marine 2 has its own unique features like huge swarms of enemies, most of the game mechanics are not revolutionary or new to the genre. According to Willits, the team just tried to execute all these elements really well and make them fun.
He also thinks that “great games will always do well” no matter the market trends or how certain genres have evolved.
One of the industry-wide problems that Willits acknowledges is rising costs. Many AAA games, especially those produced in the US, have bloated budgets, making it less and less realistic for developers and publishers to recoup their investments.
That’s why Saber tries to optimize costs and keep its pipeline as sustainable as possible. Willits, who previously worked at id Software, recently noted that the budget Space Marine 2 was less than half that of Doom Eternal.
We don't need to sell four million units to make Space Marine 2 a success. There are many games, sadly, especially out of North American developers, where if you do not sell five million copies you are a failure. I mean, what business are we in where you fail if you sell less than five million? Chief creative officer at Saber Interactive
Willits cited other Saber projects, including SnowRunner and World War Z, as examples of reasonable budgeting and focusing on core gameplay. “Look at SnowRunner! Dude, SnowRunner is literally driving trucks through mud,” he said. “That’s it, I’m done. I just described the game. 15 million people played it because the experience is perfect.”
Space Marine 2 sold over 2 million copies sold at launch, with analysts saying that the game has already made more revenue that all other Warhammer 40k titles combined last year. According to Willits, it is also the fastest-selling game he has ever worked on, including Doom, Wolfenstein, and Rage.