In a recent interview with Ausgamers, Abbie Heppe, the community manager at Respawn Entertainment, had a chat with them at…
In a recent interview with Ausgamers, Abbie Heppe, the community manager at Respawn Entertainment, had a chat with them at the recent EB Expo in Australia last weekend.
Respawn Entertainment are very much an indie studio at the minute despite EAs help, and according to Abbie, they would like to remain in that same position for a long time to come.
Yeah, we’re not looking to get bought any time soon. It’s so a part of who we are. I think, if anything, with the history of the studio and what we’re doing, I don’t foresee us being bought any time in the near future.
Abbie also said that because self-publishing is a “way more viable” option for developers now, they see no need for this to change as it is a “really cool to time to be indie.”
Yeah, because self-publishing is way more viable than it has ever really been in the industry before. I don’t think people really realise that there’s a tremendous cost to making games; a tremendous amount of work involved; a tremendous amount of people involved, and then being able to go around the world and participate in public shows, and making new builds, and all of that. Everything is just time and money and effort. But there seems to be a lot of things in the industry that are changing, and I think it’s a really cool time to be indie.
Although I’m sure there’s a bunch of indie developers out there cringing right now, going “they’re not really indie”, but we’re not owned, which is not the same; I get it. I always feel weird about saying indie too, because we have a publisher — although indie games also often have publishers — but because we’re higher budget, it seems weird to say that we’re indie. But we are!
I’ve never really considered Respawn Entertainment as a “non-indie” studio and I agree, self publishing is as easy as ever now so why would they need to stop being an indie? Titanfall seems to be doing just fine and dandy at the minute, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, as they say.
The interview with Ausgamers was a pretty large one so if you’ve got a bit of time to spare, you should definitely give it a read, especially if you’re looking forward to Titanfall.