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In This Edition
- We speak to IO CEO Hakan Abrak
- IO’s relationship with Amazom MGM
- Building live-service single-player games
- AAA game development on a budget
AAA single-player game developers should pay close attention to the IO Interactive story.
The studio broke away from Square Enix in 2017 with its Hitman IP, and after narrowly surviving the process, it has never looked back.
Over the following eight years, IO launched two Hitman titles, more than doubled the size of the company, opened offices in Spain, England, Turkey and Sweden, moved into self-publishing, signed the James Bond licence, attracted funding for a new original fantasy IP, and has even started publishing other people’s games.
And all of that on the back of a single-player game franchise.
This month, IO Interactive was in Los Angeles to showcase new Hitman content, plus reveal its James Bond game: 007 First Light. I attended the event to speak with CEO Hakan Abrak, where we discussed Bond and Hitman, but also the firm’s live-service approach to single-player games, and his promise never to make new toilets.
You can check out the full interview above, via YouTube or on your podcasting platform of choice. Alternatively, I’ve picked out the key stories below. Enjoy!
Wasteful toilets inspired IO’s approach to AAA game development
IO Interactive is an independent company developing ambitious AAA games. In today’s world of rising costs and overwhelming competition, that can be a frightening part of the industry to operate in, even for the developer of Hitman and James Bond.
But IO is prudent with its budgets, says CEO Hakan Abrak, and takes a long-term view when it comes to these franchises.
“I was the executive producer on [2012’s] Hitman Absolution, and I swore never to do more new toilets. We were just doing new everything. It was just a throwaway. When we were doing the initial foundation on Hitman 2016, we built it in a way where we would do smart reuse.
“Without being too precise, Hitman 2016… let's say it was a $100 million game. Hitman 2 was maybe $60 million. Hitman 3 was $20 million. And Hitman 3 was the highest Metacritic. It was 85, 84, and 87 Metacritic. And it had very unique new locations. Obviously, there’s a bigger investment into Bond. It's a more expensive and ambitious product. But the way we build it, the longevity… if we were to look at sequel at one point, who knows? At IO, we have a really, really good way of trying to be efficient. That's extremely important to us.”
“Hitman 2016… let's say it was a $100 million game. Hitman 2 was maybe $60 million. Hitman 3 was $20 million. And Hitman 3 was the highest Metacritic.”
He added: “With Absolution, we wasted so much. It was a wasteful production. As studio production director back then, I completely changed our thinking. The World of Assassination is a vision that started 13, 14 ago years ago. Building this foundation, the brick system as we call it, where we can make an experience, like [new Hitman mission featuring Mads Mikkelsen] very quickly and efficiently. This was a really part of us creating sustainable AAA production. I'm not going to sit here and say we are doing everything right. We'll keep on trying to improve and be less wasteful, but still super ambitious.”
Despite its rapid expansion, Abrak says IO is in a strong position. And the firm could have grown even further.
“Like most industries, our industry is also going through maturity. That's what we are living through. We could have grown a lot more, we could have taken on more projects, but we've been very mindful about growing at the pace where our culture and our expertise could follow.”
007 First Light will follow Hitman’s live-service approach
Hitman’s live-service approach to single-player games has proven to be a successful model for IO. The firm brought together 2016’s Hitman, 2018’s Hitman 2 and 2021’s Hitman 3 into one package called Hitman: Word of Assassination and continues to update the game regularly with new missions.
And as a result, World of Assassination has sold more and more each year, with currently 25 million units sold globally.
This long-term approach to Hitman has clearly paid off. So can we expect 007 First Light to follow a similar model?
“We obviously have tons of experience now from World of Assassination, and tons of experience on how to extend a single-player experience by giving desirable free content to players,” Abrak said.
“The first objective with 007 First light is to come out with the best possible, most impactful journey for gamers. Again, without giving too much detail, you could expect that we'll be applying some of our learnings from World of Assassination to Bond.
“And with Bond, we have really upped our stealth, we have really evolved the action aspects of our technology and features. Seamless combat, coming in and out of range and melee… For Hitman, it was interlocked animations, here it is freeform. We have [players] driving different exotic cars. That gives us more challenges to play with. In Hitman, you have these live challenges. And besides the things that we are able to do in Hitman, we can do more actiony things and more kinetic challenges in Bond.”
IO praises Amazon’s support and trust over James Bond
It’s been all change with the leadership behind the James Bond IP.
In February this year, Amazon – who were already the distributor of the Bond movies – paid $1 billion to acquire creative control of the franchise from long-serving producers Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson. It meant that Amazon MGM now has full control of the Bond’s creative direction, and hired veteran producers Amy Pascal and David Hayman to take charge of the series.
007 First Light is IO Interactive’s take on a Bond origin story. But it was signed and developed in collaboration with the previous regime. I asked CEO Hakan Abrak if the new ownership had thrown up any challenges regarding the game.
“We've always had a good partnership with MGM from the get go, and now Amazon MGM. So no, throughout this whole period there's been a lot of support and trust, also with Amazon coming on,” he said. “The important thing is the vision for who Bond is, the story and the approach that we've taken, and that we've been able to keep that intact throughout all this.”
Bond has been missing from screens since 2021’s No Time To Die, and there is no film on the immediate horizon, either. That will make 007 First Light the first major James Bond story (outside of books) in five years when it launches in 2026.
“Honestly, it's a privilege to be able to put our own fingerprints on such a legendary IP. We are just very grateful that we can do an original, reimagined, Bond becoming story. We're very grateful.
“At IO, we have created five original IPs. We're creating our sixth with Project Fantasy. This is the first where we are working on somebody else's IP. But it's extremely important for us to put some of IO in there, and that we’ve got to do that is just fantastic.”
IO felt it had 'unfinished business' with Nintendo Switch
IO Interactive is backing Nintendo Switch 2. It was there at the console’s launch with a version of Hitman: World of Assassination, and it's bringing 007 First Light to the platform, too.
The decision to support Nintendo's machine from the start was partially due to 'unfinished business' the firm had with the original Switch.
"Nintendo had a cloud solution at one point [for Switch], so we got Hitman on the cloud there," CEO Hakan Abrak explained.
"But without hurting anyone's feelings, the cloud solution on Switch wasn't as successful as Nintendo had expected. We felt it was such a shame that it didn't take off, so we felt there was unfinished business, really, to get Hitman: World of Assassination on Switch in a proper way for players who have that as their prefered platform.
"There's also [various Hitman modes] that lend themselves really well for a platform like Switch 2. We
thought we had a game that was very compatible with playing on-the-go, and that we owed our players to deliver that in a native way on the platform. So that's what we did."
Publishing MindsEye has been a learning experience
It’s been a busy June for IO Interactive. It made a series of announcements around Hitman, brought the game to Nintendo Switch 2, revealed 007 First Light, and held a big event in Los Angeles.
On top of that, it published its first third-party game, Build A Rocket Boy’s MindsEye.
The game had performed poorly, and was clearly a challenged launch. Our interview with Hakan Abrak took place before its release, so we didn’t spend long on it, but we did ask how he found the experience handling someone else’s game.
“It's been very different,” he said. “In some ways you're in the front seat and other ways you're in the back. Whereas we are used to being in the front seat with everything we do because of publishing our own games.
“It’s about meeting the needs and wishes of the creative team. From our experiences working with publishers, it helped us to understand… okay, what is [the game]? What is it they need? And what will we be mindful to do in this situation?
“It’s been a very close collaboration with them. It's not like we are a big publishing house that’s doing 10 external games. We are learning from this as we go, and trying to do better all the time.”
IO is done expanding (for now)
“I don't put a lot of pride in size. I put a lot of pride in making projects that leave a long-lasting impact on people.”
Over the past six years, IO has grown from 200 to 500 employees, opened offices in four new locations, and had added two new internally-developed AAA titles to its line-up.
Is there more to come?
“[We’re not expanding] for the sake of expanding,” Abrak told us. “What are our creative juices? What are the projects that we really love that we want to realize?
“I don't put a lot of pride in size. I put a lot of pride in making projects that leave a long-lasting impact on people. We have our hands full with Bond, Hitman and Project Fantasy. It'll be these franchises that we will be focusing on for a foreseeable future.”
But what about in five years, when those three projects are in the hands of players?
“[In five years] I hope we still will be in a place where we have this freedom, autonomy and that we have motivation through accountability,” he said. “That independence is very important. With that energy and that drive, we will be able to realize our dreams for the games we want to do.
“Hitman is in a great place and we just announced Hitman co-op. It’s been my personal dream for a long time to play Hitman co-op. There are so many unique experiences to be had in that sandbox. That's very exciting.
“Bond, you just saw it. Next year is just around the corner and hopefully that's going be something special.
“And Project Fantasy… we can't wait to talk about it. That's an incredibly ambitious project. I hope we can keep realizing games on this level and that we have the means and energy to do them. In five years… whether there’s another franchise in there, I don’t know. But right now, we are fulfilled.”
That’s it for today. Join us Thursday as we delve into the latest news and developments in the video games industry.
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