Bloober Team CEO Piotr Babieno can identify two turning points in the history of the Polish developer.
As he explains GamesIndustry.biz in a recent conversation, the first turning point came in 2014.
“We launched Basement Crawl for PS4, and actually the game is very well known because it was the worst game on PS4 at the time,” says Babieno. “We made a multiplayer game and online multiplayer didn’t work right.”
After redesigning his game to keep his promise, Bloober Team reflected on his career as a studio.
“We realized in 2014 that we were mostly working on titles that other people and other teams were trying to capture that were successful,” Babieno says. “So we tried to do something that we would be personally proud of. I decided we should focus on the genre that is very close to us. [tastes]. “
The company started with psychological horror games, had an Early Access hit with Layers of Fear and has since built a reputation with Observer, Layers of Fear 2, Blair Witch, and most recently the PC and Xbox Series X | S exclusive The Medium.
The Medium was actually the first of the horror games that Bloober Team invented, but Babieno says it had to be burned again until more capable hardware was available to help realize the team’s vision. Now that it’s out and the vision has been realized, Babieno says 2021 is a second turning point for the company.
“[Psychological horror] is still in our DNA, “says Babieno. We still like the taste of making games, but we like to tell our stories more with action. Therefore, our future projects will be more from the perspective of the first person, such as The Medium. We will have much more advanced game mechanics. ‘
The Medium is a project on the edge of Bloober Team, which transcends the old approach and the new approach of the company. Babieno says the studio plans to “make advanced AA games with an AAA quality of graphics and animation, but of course a little smaller.”
He adds: “In fact, we’re been working on another game project, another horror IP, for over a year, and we’re doing it with a very well-known game publisher. I can not tell you who I can ‘I will not tell you what the project is, but I’m pretty sure if people realize we’re working on it, they’ll be very excited.
A number of horror franchises have worked over the years to take action in the pursuit of a broader acceptability, and even as sales proved the thesis, it often remained controversial to the broad fan base.
“We’ve had that conversation for three years,” Babieno says. “Because we have realized that we are in a niche, and we want to broaden the niche. Our future projects will not necessarily be horror games. These can be called thrillers. We are much broader with The Medium and the things we do.” try to do again in the future.
“When you think of Resident Evil 8, Hellblade 2, even in a way The Last of Us … This is the area we want to be in. And yet we want to preserve our DNA, with fear and emotions, the things which is hidden from our eyes. But again, we do not want the environment to make our storytelling, but to have ‘real’ storytelling with characters, action, and so on. “
Babieno knows that some fans will be willing to watch the future endeavors of Bloober Team, simply based on the studio’s record at this point, but it will clearly not be enough to look forward to a horror genre that is not just growing. but also diversifies with innovative hits such as the collaborative group Fasmophobia with four players.
“Of course we have some core fans returning to our games because they are Bloober Team productions, but it’s about having a unique offering,” says Babieno. “If you can offer something other than what’s on the market, people’re more likely to watch it. Because players can choose more than just games. They can choose Netflix TV shows, graphic novels, or spending time on social networks. “So we do not compete with other horror game makers; I would say we are competing for the time of gamers.”
Babieno says Game Pass helped expose Bloober Team’s games to a larger audience
If Bloober Team comes out on top in the competition, Babieno believes he should reach as wide an audience as possible. That’s part of why the studio partnered with Microsoft to put Blair Witch and now The Medium in Game Pass. There are 18 million Game Pass subscribers, Babieno says, and most would not know of The Medium if the service had not been.
“I think if you’re creating a whole new IP like with The Medium, systems like Game Pass are very useful because players will learn about your brand very quickly,” Babieno says.
While some industry observers have expressed skepticism about the long-term impact of Game Pass and how the ‘Netflix-for-games’ subscriber model could harm developers, Babieno says he sees no downside to it. It also did not hurt that Microsoft, when Blair Witch was launched in Game Pass, gave marketing pressure, including a revealing trailer during its E3 2019 stage show.
“It’s very important for a game developer to show their game to as wide an audience as possible,” says Babieno. “So I would say Game Pass helps us, and in the future we might try to do something about it with Microsoft again.”
Regardless of the studio’s new penchant for action or how its future projects are distributed, Babieno is confident that their inherent Blooberness will be clear to players.
“It will still be Bloober Team games,” he says, “and everyone who plays it will get the taste. But they will be much more market-oriented.”