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Mike Gamble, Epic Games’ UK boss has blamed “stupid acquisitions” for the closure of high profile UK studios.
He uses Disney Interactive’s purchase of Black Rock Studios to back up his argument; Disney confirmed the closure of Black Rock Studios earlier this month.
“In my person opinion, yeah, there have been acquisitions by publishers of developers they really had no right – well, they had a right because they had the money – but what was the point of a well-known children’s IP holder buying a hardcore racing studio? It doesn’t make sense,” Gamble told Eurogamer.
“A lot of the pain we’ve had in the last 18 months has been down to the economics of games development, which has changed,” Gamble explained.
“Big publishers have had to pull back in money wise and the casualties of that are the studios that haven’t performed for them because the industry has changed.”
“It’s sad in a sense, but it’s fantastic in a whole other way. Of course, a percentage of those people have left the industry. But most of them haven’t. They’re still in the industry. They’re not just doing other cool stuff.”
Three independent studios have risen from the ashes of Black Rock so far: Roundcube Entertainment, lead by Nick Baynes, the director of Split/Second; ShortRound Games, formed by four previous Black Rock department directors; and BossAlien, lead by Jason Avent, the director on Pure.
A similar thing happened to Bizarre Creations, which was closed by Activision back in February due to ‘unfortunate circumstances’. Three studios have been born out of this death, too: Hogrocket, formed of Ben Ward and Stephen Cakebread, the creator of Geometry Wars; Lucid Games, lead by former senior manager Pete Wallace; and more more recently, Totem Games, founded by Matt Cavanagh, the lead designer on Blur.
Gamble sees the flip-side of high profile developer closures – the rise of studios like these.
“The games I’m seeing from indies and small developers are brilliant. I love it. Really interesting and creative. They’re not ticking boxes for publishers that say, we’ve got this gap in the portfolio, and there’s this demographic, so we need to create this.
“They’re playing with concepts, with how things are controlled. It’s very creative.”
