Savage Planet lead explains Google really didn’t like “subjectivity” in their anti-corporation game but luckily “they’re not the smartest”

Following years of working at Electronic Arts and Ubisoft, game director Alex Hutchinson found a smaller success with 2020’s Journey to the Savage Planet. An adventure game that’s thoroughly anti-corporation, Hutchinson’s team at the now-deceased Typhoon Studios were picked up by Google for its quickly-butchered Stadia project.

Speaking to VideoGamer for the game’s sequel, Revenge of the Savage Planet, which has just released under the newly-formed Raccoon Logic, Hutchinson recalls the experience of making an anti-corporation message whilst being owned by one of the biggest corporations in the world: Google.

“Oh, they don’t like it, they don’t like it, I’m telling you that,” Hutchinson laughed. “I think, luckily, not to be general, but they’re not the smartest. Or maybe… there’s a reason why intelligence and wisdom are different stats in D&D. So, maybe they can do the math but they don’t understand the story”.

Hutchinson explained that working underneath the arm of Google was a “bad marriage from day one”. Working under the shadow of the internet’s manager would frequently result in notes about moments to scrap or whining about scenarios they didn’t like.

“You get in there and then they’re like, ‘well, we don’t like this subjectivity’ and you’re like ‘well, we make content which is the most subjective stuff in the world’ and they’re like, ‘well, that’s awful’. It solidified my distaste of this process,” the game director explained.

When the studio was acquired in 2019, it was a largely financial decision. With Google seemingly putting a tonne of money into its cloud-gaming platform, it seemed like a great move. Unfortunately, despite countless millions being spent on the project, Stadia Games and Entertainment joined the stacked Google Graveyard just over a year after acquiring Typhoon. Not long after, Stadia itself was proclaimed dead.

“We had 30 people who weren’t getting any younger and had been in the industry a long time and the idea of financial stability is very attractive,” Hutchinson said. “It’s hard to say ‘no’ when that comes across. And they say all the right things when you’re starting out… it all makes sense logically but then you get there and you’re like, ‘oh no, this is very bad.’”

Hutchinson explained that Stadia’s extremely short lifespan meant that the team “never even went” to Google’s offices before the company pulled the plug.

“For a while, we thought, ‘it’ll be fun to be in this really rich company where there’s literally a rule about a barista every 25-feet’. That sounds amazing! Two hot meals a day? All these things. And then the pandemic shut it down so we never went to a Google office, and then we were all laid off. So, all these perks, we never got any perks.”

When creating the first game, Typhoon Studios was initially under the arm of Microsoft, then under the brutal force of Google, and then the game was picked up by 505 Games. Hutchinson laughed that they’re likely “the only IP ever to be owned by both Microsoft and Google”.

As an independent studio with Revenge of the Savage Planet, the team’s new studio at Raccoon Logic has to be a “one-game studio”, which has it’s own major stresses. However, without the glaring eyes of Google, Microsoft or any other massive corporation looking for a reason to bring down the axe, it at least feels more rewarding.

Revenge of the Savage Planet is available on Xbox Series, PC (here), and PlayStation 5. The game is also available on Xbox Game Pass.