Author: Stephanie Chan / Source: VentureBeat
Sharkmob is the latest indie studio to spring forth from the deep talent pool of triple-A developers.
Its founders have racked up more than a decade each at Ubisoft Massive, working on the likes of Tom Clancy’s The Division and IO Interactive’s Hitman. Today the new studio announced that it’s working on a multiplayer game that will debut on PC and likely Xbox One and PlayStation 4 as well.The Malmö-based studio is keeping details about the game and release date under wraps. However, Sharkmob CEO Fredrik Rundqvist has revealed that the team has licensed intellectual property (IP) that he’s calling a “cult classic.” The plan is to turn it into a franchise, complete with content updates and live services once it’s launched.
Other studios have successfully licensed IP from shows and movies and turned them into popular games. For instance, publisher and developer Funcom explored the Conan the Barbarian universe in an open-world exploration game, Conan Exiles, which sold 320,000 copies in its first week. It has also reimagined its own IP — the massively multiplayer online role-playing game The Secret World — and relaunched it to appeal to more players.
Developing games using existing IP has several benefits. For one, part of the audience may already be familiar with franchise. It also enables developers to focus on expanding the world that’s already there rather than expend energy on laying down exposition.
“We’re not really interested in making a more traditional single-player type of game,” said Rundqvist in a phone call with GamesBeat. “What we play privately, the kind of games we love, are very social, very competitive, always multiplayer. The more the merrier. Of course, in our opinion, the pure mechanics of that are not interesting if you don’t have the right IP, the right setting, the right fantasy to get people really excited about the game mechanics we provide. I guess that also gives you a hint as to what kind of game we’re making.”
Rundqvist was chief operating officer at Massive and the executive producer for The Division. Joining him on Sharkmob’s core team are Anders Holmquist, technical director for The Division and Ubisoft’s Snowdrop game engine; Martin Hultberg, The Division’s IP director and Massive’s head of communications; Petter Mannerfelt, The Division’s game director, producer, and technical director; and Rodrigo Cortes, art director for The Division and brand art director for Hitman. Individually, the team members have also worked on Ubisoft games such as Far Cry 3, World in Conflict, and Assassin’s Creed: Revelations.
“I’m not sure, but I think this is fairly unusual about Sharkmob, which is that we have five guys who’ve done games for 10 to…
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