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Arkane studio veterans launch WolfEye: a small studio making big games (interviews with GamesIndustry and VG 24/7)


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Raphael Colantonio and Julien Roby share their vision for a distributed team making titles focused on experience over technical prowess (GamesIndustry)

 

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When Arkane Studios founder Raphael Colantonio departed the company in 2017, his only publicly-stated goals were to "spend some time with my son and reflect on what is important to me and my future."

 

Two years later, he's returning to the industry in full force confident that making games is still one of those important things. Today, he and fellow Arkane veteran Julien Roby have announced WolfEye Studios, a small, distributed company that's currently working on a new title that it will announce at The Game Awards in December.

 

For both Colantonio and Roby, the idea for WolfEye Studios came to them during separate periods of soul searching after their respective departures from development around the same time. While Colantonio tells me he found his inspiration in relaxation and boredom after leaving Arkane, for Roby it took leaving a studio he was passionate about (Arkane) for new experiences at places like 2K to make him pine for the kinds of games he really wanted to make.

 

"A lot of people asked me, 'Why would you leave [Arkane]? It's heaven!'" Colantonio says. "And it kind of was. In my case, I needed a break. It had been 18 years in the same room, and I needed to define myself. There was a bit of an identity thing going on. Who am I without Arkane? That was a very important step to my growth."

 

Roby adds, "With WolfEye, we really wanted to get back to the core ideas we both like in games, both as players and as designers. We like games that respond to player actions, where the world reacts to what you are doing, and the experience is owned by the player. It was what we wanted to get back to rather than being constantly distracted by the complexity of doing games which are technically more involved, and little by little your focus in development moves away from the actual experience toward technicalities which in the end don't change the experience much."

 

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“When a game is successful, it’s a miracle”: Arkane founder Raphael Colantonio opens new studio and vows to fight industry trends (VG 24/7)

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Raphael Colantonio is one of the few developers around today still fighting the good fight for the immersive sim.  Now he’s back in the game, launching a new studio called WolfEye as creative director and president, along with executive producer and CEO, Julien Roby. Their goal? To push back against industry trends where graphical power is king, instead focusing on interactions, physics, and AI. The studio’s new game will be revealed during The Game Awards 2019.

 

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That's fine, but theyre talking like theyre not going to do the same thing all the other indie devs do; make innovative games with meh graphics, or pixel art, which i'm personally tired of.

 

Why cant we ever get interactions, physics, A.I., AND graphical power?

 

I seem to remember a time when games were pushing the boundaries on both ends.

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7 minutes ago, XxEvil AshxX said:

That's fine, but theyre talking like theyre not going to do the same thing all the other indie devs do; make innovative games with meh graphics, or pixel art, which i'm personally tired of.

 

Why cant we ever get interactions, physics, A.I., AND graphical power?

 

I seem to remember a time when games were pushing the boundaries on both ends.

I think Asobo Studio did a great job with A Plague Tale on all three. The rat tech they created is really cool.

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