Just Cause and Mad Max developer to focus on original IPs

Swedish-based game developer Avalanche Studios, famous for Just Cause, has said the studio will focus on original IPs in the coming years.

In an interview with Gameinformer, co-founder Christofer Sundberg said the studio wasn’t lacking in ideas.

"We have a huge catalogue of old ideas that we want to bring to life and obviously come up with a few new ones. But definitely focus on doing something original again,” he said.

He also said that, on occasion, publishers did look for ideas they could strap a license to.

“Sometimes the ideas you might have when we pitch a game to a publisher, we can come up how we want to do this type of game. And they say well we have this license that you might want to apply that idea on, and that's usually how it ends up. I think every developer in the world is being driven by creating your own ideas. That's the fun part of game development, and owning that creative process and really be able to make your own dreams become real."

But he also said that he would like to see more focus on self-publishing and that the studio was planning to move in that direction after the success of free-to-play The Hunter.

“If you look at our financial numbers The Hunter is actually contributing quite a lot to our financial success. We're in that fortunate position to be able to control our own destiny and having that direct connection with our players is very important to the studio. So that's definitely where I see our future."

The advent of self publishing, and avenues like the App Store and the Google and Amazon equivalents have created a much more independent business model for developers, but does this mean we can expect to see the demise of traditional publishers and their roles?

“[W]e have a great partnership with Square Enix and our other publishers who we work with," he continued, "and it's something that we would like to continue working on as well."