Horror game developer Bloober Team was offered the opportunity to create a video game Saw, but chose to create this game. Blair Witch to replace.
Speaking to IGN at Poland’s Digital Dragons gaming conference, Bloober CEO Piotr Babieno talked about working with licensors and explained how the Blair Witch project came about – and what did not the result is happening.
“I worked with our good partner, United Talent Agency,” explains Babieno. “We’ve met a lot of people in the industry from Hollywood. UTA is very recognizable and they have good relations with all the major studios. We spoke with [multiple studios]and some of them came to us and [said] “Okay, you guys are focusing on horror and we want to work with you.” [But] licensor was very frank: ‘We wanted to do this story. We want the game in 2021 [to coincide with our movie launch]”and so on. We decided, ‘Okay, [this is] Not what we want to do. ‘”
Bloober is rumored to be developing a Silent Hill game for Konami, with some reports focus on the remake of Silent Hill 2. Babieno had previously told IGN that the studio insisted on working on games it could make (including “projects we couldn’t talk about”, as Babieno put it), and that a studio had meets that criteria and presents some great opportunities:
“Lionsgate came to us and said, ‘Guys, we love [Bloober’s breakout game] Scary classes. We have seen what you are do with Observer, so we want to work with you. We know that you want to play your own game, so please, here is our horror IP list; select one.’ We can [have chosen] Saw, is more popular than Blair Witch, but we decided on Blair Witch because the universe has many opportunities to build something new. That’s why we chose this project. “
Babieno said that being offered a license like this was not a one-time thing, and Bloober has received many offers to work on licensed horror games since then. Blair Witch 2019 – but had to decline due to its other projects.
“Honestly, right now we’re always getting requests from studios, or from other licensors, to work with them, because Bloober Team is in some way recognizable. unfortunately, for almost a year we have [had to say] ‘passes’ most things, because we don’t have the ability to do any more titles at once. “
Bloober is currently working on two major projects. One is a game made of Konami – the project that many believe is a Silent Hill project – and the other is a new IP with the Publisher Private Division. Babieno says a third game is also in pre-production. The company was previously has teased some sort of return to its Scary Classroom series.
Babieno said that Bloober is resisting developing too much simply to work on more licensed games: “We could do a third project. We could do a third project. [build a] larger group, but we didn’t want to, because we wanted to focus on the quality and the feeling that [our developers are] still, in a way, independent [and] still feel that they are working on their own title. “
Joe Skrebels is IGN’s Executive News Editor. Follow him on Twitter. Got a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to newstips@sign.com.
