QUOTE | “Anyone who has ever said ‘this is the future and this part of gaming is dead’ has been proven wrong every single time. We like to try it all. For a long time we wanted to try a multiplayer game and we had this idea. We shouldn’t be afraid.” – Bethesda studio head Todd Howard on why games-as-a-service is not the permanent future of the company.
QUOTE | “Creatively, how does Ubisoft decide how long to keep creating new content for a live game after launch, as opposed to moving on to a sequel? Where does that line get drawn? This line gets fuzzier every year.” – Ubisoft Canada executive VP of creative, Lionel Raynaud, looks to games-as-a-service as the future of the company’s major IPs.
QUOTE | “I know Katamari made some people happy, but maybe just a small amount of people, not like a AAA title with a million billion people. Not like a Fortnite or a GTA, blah blah blah. I don’t think I made change [in the industry], or just not enough.” - Wattam developer Keita Takahashi wants to change the way people think about games, but doesn’t think he’s been successful.
QUOTE | “Right now, games tend to either fall into tropes about people with disabilities or make glaring errors in representation, such as giving someone a wheelchair they would never use. We need more characters with disabilities in games, but we also need to make sure they’re good representations.” - Xbox disability community lead Tara Voelker praises the Xbox Adaptive Controller as the first Microsoft product to fully embrace the company’s Inclusive Design process.
QUOTE | “People were like, ‘Hey are you in Fallout 4,’ and I was like, ‘Nah, man,’ Then someone sent me a YouTube clip and I’m like, ‘Holy shit, that’s me!’” - Cissy Jones, the voice of Delilah in Firewatch, joins God of War voice actress Danielle Bisutti, Gone Home actress Sarah Elmaleh, and voice specialist Keythe Farley in discussing how developers can get the best performances possible from voice talent.
QUOTE | “C++ is a powerful language in some ways, because it’s what we make games in so obviously it’s doing something right. But it makes it a lot harder than it should be.” – The Witness developer Jonathan Blow on why he’s working on Jai, a new programming language.
QUOTE | “We wanted to make something that has a retro feel in its difficulty, its replayability, and stuff like that, but with an art style that is fresh and clean and ready for high-resolution displays.” - Catalin Zima-Zegreanu, one of the founders of Breadcrumbs Interactive, discusses how the studio’s debut game embraced Slavic folklore and won the Nordic Discovery contest.
QUOTE | “We don’t believe in our success until we deliver it. We never claim victory until it’s occurred. We have very powerful, smart, capable competitors bringing great products to market and we need to win - that means we have to work harder than the next guy.” – Take-Two Interactive CEO Strauss Zelnick hopes that Red Dead Redemption 2 will be extraordinary, but wants to avoid overconfidence.
STAT | $92 million – The amount of revenue Fortnite generated in the eleven weeks ending June 18; five times the amount of its rival, PUBG.
QUOTE | “The ‘awareness gap’ between genders creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that allows some men in esports to say that women are not interested in esports.” - Women in Games releases a strategic report to improve gender diversity in esports.
QUOTE | “We would rather have 20 epic games as opposed to 50 mediocre games,” – Tommy Tallarico, Intellivision president, revealing that the company’s upcoming console will have all new games, all exclusives, and will focus on a small amount of high-quality titles.