Remedy's next big game is being made for less money, but can still be great, CEO says

IbizaPocholo

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
www.gamefile.news

Remedy's next big game is being made for less money, but can still be great, CEO says

The head of the studio behind Alan Wake and Control talks to Game File about Remedy's survival, a key cancellation, and getting game devs to think more about game business (but not too much!)
www.gamefile.news www.gamefile.news

Tero Virtala, CEO of Remedy Entertainment, briefly startled me back in March, when we met to discuss the acclaimed Finnish studio he's been leading since 2016.

Remedy is renowned for spooky single-player thrillers such as Alan Wake and Control, and it is celebrated for the idiosyncratic tastes of its game creators.

At Remedy, Virtala handles the less-discussed business end of things.

So, in a hotel room near the Game Developers Conference in downtown San Francisco, our conversation wasn't about characters, controls or cutscenes.

We talked about the industry, about how Remedy was doing and about the big changes the studio had been making. For a moment, we were talking about game budgets.

I brought up the budget for Remedy's next big single-player game, Control 2, which the publicly-traded studio told investors is being developed for €50 million ($57 million), split between Remedy and the Hollywood movies and game production company Annapurna.

I hadn't been sure what the development costs were for Remedy's last big singleplayer game, 2023's multiple Game of the Year award-winning Alan Wake 2.

Then came the surprise.

Alan Wake 2's budget, compared to Control 2's, Virtala told me, was "a bit higher."

And there we had it: In this era of ballooning game budgets, here was a rare instance of a development studio acknowledging that they'll be making their next big single-player game for less than their last one. (Note: There's a whole other Remedy game coming out before Control 2. The studio's debut multiplayer effort and first self-published game, FBC Firebreak, a co-op spin-off from Control, launches next month).

Virtala believes that €50 million is enough to make a great Remedy game. "I think with that we can create excellent games," he said. If the team sticks to that budget and the game sells two million units, "we are at break-even per game."

He added: "That then builds the basis that, if we create an excellent game and it happens to sell four million or five million units, then we are really happy."
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Not every game has to be a high budget game, but if they push the talent forward, have a good fixed concept in mind and work smartly then I think they can make a great game. COE33 is a prime example.
 
DEI and Epic cash running out, eh herkkuperse?

GK-sLxRXIAAX4fo
 
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If they aim for only 2M unit to break even, REMEDY games has always been amazing. Even with worst critics their average output would be rated an 8.

Easy target. CONTROL 2 should sell way more.
 
Expedition 33 comparisons are hilarious.

Not every game can take player on emotional trip via story.

Outside of that, just make it Control 1.5, minimal changes. Good boss fights.

I will be there day 1.
 
Remedy are doing enough to stay afloat but will never prosper if they continue down their current path. I wonder if they will continue paying those Sweet Baby consulting fees? They willingly abandoned their core audience in pursuit of a leftist one. They completely embraced 'woke' along with a number of questionable managerial decisions… I.e. Epic games store exclusivity and no physical media. It's no wonder they are experiencing these sort of issues. Has to be embarrassing when new IPs released from various inexperienced development teams are selling many times the number of copies as your largest titles and they contain no DEI or 'woke' slant whatsoever. Could almost make Remedy management reconsider a couple of things… almost.
 
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Remedy have always been a rare studio with sensible budget control, whilst still delivering high end titles. It can be done, as we've also seen recently with expedition 33. I really don't know how these other studios keep spending hundreds of millions on 💩
 
YOU PC BRO?! said:
Remedy are doing enough to stay afloat but will never prosper if they continue down their current path. I wonder if they will continue paying those Sweet Baby consulting fees? They willingly abandoned their core audience in pursuit of a leftist one. They completely embraced 'woke' along with a number of questionable managerial decisions… I.e. Epic games store exclusivity and no physical media. It's no wonder they are experiencing these sort of issues. Has to be embarrassing when new IPs released from various inexperienced development teams are selling many times the number of copies as your largest titles and they contain no DEI or 'woke' slant whatsoever. Could almost make Remedy management reconsider a couple of things… almost.
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The main criticisms of Alan Wake 2 had nothing to do with the game being "woke", and it seems to be selling similarly to the original, which only managed 3.2 million copies over a 5 year period. That's without having the benefit of a Steam release.

While Control has sold 4.5 million units, which seems ok for a new and fairly "niche" IP.

I would be interested to hear what is so terribly "woke" or "leftist" about either of these games, other than having a female or black player character, and that one line of dialogue in AW2 which no one actually seems to understand. (It's said by an evil version of the main character).
 
Control was a smaller budget title already. Them applying the same thinking to the sequel isn't unexpected as they have a pretty good idea on how the game should sell. What is a bit surprising is that AW2 will end up with a bigger budget than C2. I would honestly expect the opposite considering that AW2 is EGS exclusive on PC while C2 is not.
 
dgrdsv said:
Control was a smaller budget title already. Them applying the same thinking to the sequel isn't unexpected as they have a pretty good idea on how the game should sell. What is a bit surprising is that AW2 will end up with a bigger budget than C2. I would honestly expect the opposite considering that AW2 is EGS exclusive on PC while C2 is not.
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AW2 had a bigger budget (and was EGS exclusive) because Epic published it.
 
FireFly said:
The main criticisms of Alan Wake 2 had nothing to do with the game being "woke", and it seems to be selling similarly to the original, which only managed 3.2 million copies over a 5 year period. That's without having the benefit of a Steam release.

While Control has sold 4.5 million units, which seems ok for a new and fairly "niche" IP.

I would be interested to hear what is so terribly "woke" or "leftist" about either of these games, other than having a female or black player character, and that one line of dialogue in AW2 which no one actually seems to understand. (It's said by an evil version of the main character).
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You must be joking? Did you really just ask me to demonstrate aspects of AW2 that are "woke" without being able to point to the primary examples? Regardless, is it not enough that Alan Wake was sidelined and only playable for 50% of the time in his own game? As for Control, the controversy centred around the mannish appearance of the main character. As I'm not allowed to comment on that then let's ignore the "woke" and focus on sales…

In short, given their pedigree, Remedy should be doing better. Especially considering the development time invested to produce mediocre titles like AW2. They sold off rights to Max Payne which was a huge mistake. They have now had to strike a deal with Rockstar to remake the first two games. They won't see all the profit. They are making a sequel to Control instead of doing something where they have a chance of selling 10 - 20 million. Gambling the future of the business on niche projects is risky. Surely something more mainstream that would sell more makes sense?
 
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YOU PC BRO?! said:
You must be joking? Did you really just ask me to demonstrate aspects of AW2 that are "woke" without being able to point to the primary examples? Regardless, is it not enough that Alan Wake was sidelined and only playable for 50% of the time in his own game? As for Control, the controversy centred around the mannish appearance of the main character. As I'm not allowed to comment on that then let's ignore the "woke" and focus on sales…

In short, given their pedigree, Remedy should be doing better. Especially considering the development time invested to produce mediocre titles like AW2. They sold off rights to Max Payne which was a huge mistake. They have now had to strike a deal with Rockstar to remake the first two games. They won't see all the profit. They are making a sequel to Control instead of doing something where they have a chance of selling 10 - 20 million. Gambling the future of the business on niche projects is risky. Surely something more mainstream that would sell more makes sense?
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So I guess it comes down to whether wokeness is about the story developers are trying to tell, i.e the content of what they have to say. Or whether it's about the physical appearance of the characters in that story. In your example, if the other playable character in AW2 was Casey (with the same powers/backstory?), would everything then be ok? And if in Control you played Jesse's brother, would that also be ok?

If so then then being woke simply seems to mean telling a story where a non white male character plays a central part. And I confess I don't see what is so terrible about that, or how it strongly threatens sales, given the existence of such characters across the medium.

But I think actually the criticism about not playing as Alan Wake throughout the game can be a substantive criticism, that wouldn't be addressed if Casey was the other playable character. However, a lot of the criticism AW2 gets is also for the clunkiness of the Alan Wake sections, and how poorly sign posted and confusing they can be, with long drawn out and esoteric puzzles. So it's not clear to me that a game that just featured Alan Wake in the Dark Place would be any better.

I agree that Remedy could have more success doing something more mainstream, but they have always been about producing quirky games. Max Payne turned out to be a huge success but was also super unique and not something that any other series tried to replicate.
 
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Of course it can. Control was developed on a 30 million dollar budget, yet released to critical praise, financial success, and introduced destruction that is still the best in the industry, and ray tracing that was immensely advanced at the time, and still looks good today. A sequel that has a tighter budget than Alan Wake 2 makes sense, and won't dictate how the game turns out.

Unless Remedy takes Control 2 outside of the Oldest House, then I don't see why having a larger budget than AW2 would be needed.
 
DanielG165 said:
Of course it can. Control was developed on a 30 million dollar budget, yet released to critical praise, financial success, and introduced destruction that is still the best in the industry, and ray tracing that was immensely advanced at the time, and still looks good today. A sequel that has a tighter budget than Alan Wake 2 makes sense, and won't dictate how the game turns out.

Unless Remedy takes Control 2 outside of the Oldest House, then I don't see why having a larger budget than AW2 would be needed.
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$30 million? Shit, they really squeezed a lot out of that budget. If they cut back on the excessive writing bits and backtracking, and put more resources into environmental variation with the same budget that would be amazing.
 
FireFly said:
So I guess it comes down to whether wokeness is about the story developers are trying to tell, i.e the content of what they have to say. Or whether it's about the physical appearance of the characters in that story. In your example, if the other playable character in AW2 was Casey (with the same powers/backstory?), would everything then be ok? And if in Control you played Jesse's brother, would that also be ok?

If so then then being woke simply seems to mean telling a story where a non white male character plays a central part. And I confess I don't see what is so terrible about that, or how it strongly threatens sales, given the existence of such characters across the medium.

But I think actually the criticism about not playing as Alan Wake throughout the game can be a substantive criticism, that wouldn't be addressed if Casey was the other playable character. However, a lot of the criticism AW2 gets is also for the clunkiness of the Alan Wake sections, and how poorly sign posted and confusing they can be, with long drawn out and esoteric puzzles. So it's not clear to me that a game that just featured Alan Wake in the Dark Place would be any better.

I agree that Remedy could have more success doing something more mainstream, but they have always been about producing quirky games. Max Payne turned out to be a huge success but was also super unique and not something that any other series tried to replicate.
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I admire your attempt to control the narrative on this. Why are you pretending not to understand what the term "woke" refers to? Yes, purposefully masculinising female characters to appease minority groups is generally what is considered "woke". Grounding world, character or story elements in a feminist frame also falls under the definition of "woke". Attempting to balance game time between the male series protagonist and a new race swapped female character may just be considered "woke". It certainly appears that there was an effort to inject DEI into the game. Indicative typically with boasts of "modern" or "wider" audience appeal. When a developer uses such language it simply means 'the target audience for our game is modern leftists'. Injection of DEI and feminist tropes is precisely what companies like Sweet Baby Inc do.

For the record, I don't consider games that feature non-white characters as woke unless it is a result of subversive DEI requirements. A new franchise like 'South of Midnight' has a right to sink or swim on its own merits. Likewise, if an established franchise race or gender swaps existing characters then that is an immediate red flag.

Sidestepping our evident disagreement, other than Max Payne, I do wish Remedy would revisit Quantum Break. I confess, even though the game was obviously flawed, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Live-action tv episodes interspersed with gameplay sections was truly great. The concept could be done so much better now, it's truly a shame Remedy hasn't tried something similar again.
 
Clear said:
And if I was part of the team being told, I'd ask whether we're being given 5 years to make the thing?
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As an established team with double the budget, I'd expect them to be able to accomplish a game of similar quality to a first-time studio in a lesser amount of time.
 
YOU PC BRO?! said:
I admire your attempt to control the narrative on this. Why are you pretending not to understand what the term "woke" refers to? Yes, purposefully masculinising female characters to appease minority groups is generally what is considered "woke". Grounding world, character or story elements in a feminist frame also falls under the definition of "woke". Attempting to balance game time between the male series protagonist and a new race swapped female character may just be considered "woke". It certainly appears that there was an effort to inject DEI into the game. Indicative typically with boasts of "modern" or "wider" audience appeal. When a developer uses such language it simply means 'the target audience for our game is modern leftists'. Injection of DEI and feminist tropes is precisely what companies like Sweet Baby Inc do.
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You seem to be coming from the question of what was the motivation of the people making the game. Which we can't actually know for sure, but you want to point to specific pieces of evidence that indicate that certain "subversive" elements were involved. As if these elements inherently corrupt the game, make it woke, not worthy of further examination, etc.

I am treating the game as finished product and asking, what ideologies is the story propagating (woke or not), what are the actual messages of the game, and what do we think about these messages? Even in the case of characters' appearance, like in the case of Jesse in Control, lets say you're right and the main character was made more masculine deliberately. Does that make her stick out? Does it make her seem more artificial and take you out of the experience? Well, I think you can make an argument either way, but in the case of Control specifically all of the characters look profoundly weird in a way that is almost unnerving, including Jesse's brother, who appears almost inhuman. So to me Jesse actually would stick out more if she was conventionally attractive.

Maybe you disagree, but still it requires examining the game and making an argument in the context of the game. Because in principle any game can be produced from any motivation. Like say Jesse's weird appearance is partly the result of problems during the face scanning process. Does that change how effective her character model is? Say Remedy prove Sweet Baby's work wasn't actually used in Control. What does that change about our assessment of the game as a finished product? It magically becomes "better" because these subversive (and undetectable?) elements weren't actually involved?

Or in the case of Alan Wake 2, Saga is created by Alan and is an instrument of his attempt to escape the Dark Place by melding together what he feels are essential story telling tropes in a way that can help him break free, while still respecting the rules of the dark place. So Saga's story is itself is derivative, not bold or imaginative and it doesn't attempt to redefine Saga's potential. It is only by realising that he doesn't need to rely on these tired story elements that he becomes free. It's only at the conclusion of the story that he can actually write an original story.

How do you tell that story, without involving other characters in a gameplay capacity? At this point we could say, oh look Sweet Baby made the developers give these characters additional screen time. Or we could say, this story is about Wake trying (and failing) to write another story. I think the answer to this debate is to address the story as it is in the game and whether the elements it introduces are good or bad and whether that badness is due to them being woke. Like with talk about feminist elements, which "feminist" portrayals in the game were problematic?
 
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You dont need crazy budget to make good games....Expedition 33 is proof of that.

Heck even in movie industry movie like Godzilla Minus One had better special effects than most high budget Marvel movies.
 
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amigastar said:
I think they can make it work if they do it smart.
But i'm waiting for the Max Payne Remake.
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Remakes of great PS2 games are detrimental to PlayStation as they take users out of the online PSN ecosystem..
Every time you advertise a PS2 remake it reminds people how great the PS2 is and the PS5 loses users.
The SH2 remake reminded everyone how SH, SH2, SH3 and SH4 can all be played in their full glory with memory card enabled extras on PS2.
You flat out can't do any of that on a PS4 or PS5.
Once a user has the PS2 out and plugged in there's a chance they'll stay off the PS5 for a while.
Making newer users who've never had a PS2 aware of the PS2 is turning them on to a massive library of inexpensive games.
PlayStation and studios would mutually benefit from an outright ban on PS2 remakes and remasters.
 
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GrayChild said:
DEI and Epic cash running out, eh herkkuperse?

GK-sLxRXIAAX4fo
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Their "focus on sustainability work" in reality is actually finding whichever corporation with big wallets to partner with will cover their costly games that only sell 2 or 3M copies. If their games are bargain binned long enough like Control it might hit 5M (at 4.5M by Nov 2024 according to google check).
 
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Danjin44 said:
You dont need crazy budget to make good games....Expedition 33 is proof of that.

Heck even in movie industry movie like Godzilla Minus One had better special effects than most high budget Marvel movies.
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Problem is when it comes to budgets, all anyone knows is what the last budgets were. So everyone points to last year, or last product's budget and says I need that at minimum (or more due to inflation).

A lot of companies with bad budgeting dont have people who look at the data and try to cut dumb costs because at the end of the day they are lazy or unskilled or purposely dont have people checking this because they want to be unshackled.

It's not easy to grind through legions of costs and processes and nickel and dime savings because it takes time and makes the company look like cheapskates.... "why are we going backwards in budget? How am I supposed to do my job with less costs?"

I've heard that from probably every sales guy I've worked with. And the amount of dumb shit I've seen (a combo of on purpose, idiocy or laziness) is crazy.

Some people at companies just dont give a shit about costs and budgets even when part of their job is tied to it. Sounds crazy. But some people just dont care. To them, it's the company's money so who cares. But then when its time to go out to lunch half of them are the cheapest fucks you'll ever meet and dont want to spend $10-15 and brown bag it to save money. Or when it's company BBQ day or one of the marketing assistants load up tables of free ding and dented products anyone can grab, they'll load their trunk with as much free shit as possible and eat as much food like pigs.
 
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StreetsofBeige said:
Problem is when it comes to budgets, all anyone knows is what the last budgets were. So everyone points to last year, or last product's budget and says I need that at minimum (or more due to inflation).

A lot of companies with bad budgeting dont have people who look at the data and try to cut dumb costs because at the end of the day they are lazy or unskilled or purposely dont have people checking this because they want to be unshackled.

It's not easy to grind through legions of costs and processes and nickel and dime savings because it takes time and makes the company look like cheapskates.... "why are we going backwards in budget? How am I supposed to do my job with less costs?"

I've heard that from probably every sales guy I've worked with. And the amount of dumb shit I've seen (a combo of on purpose, idiocy or laziness) is crazy.

Some people at companies just dont give a shit about costs and budgets even when part of their job is tied to it. Sounds crazy. But some people just dont care. To them, it's the company's money so who cares. But then when it's time to go out to lunch half of them are the cheapest fucks you'll ever meet and dont want to spend $10-15 and brown bag it to save money. Or when it's company BBQ day or one of the marketing assistants load up tables of free ding and dented products anyone can grab, they'll load their trunk with as much free shit as possible and eat as much food like pigs.
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My point comes devs and publishers need use their budget much more thoughtful way….

For example do we need to hire celebrities to promote a game? To me that money could spend better else where.
 
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Danjin44 said:
My point comes devs and publishers need use their budget much more thoughtful way….

For example do we need to hire celebrities to promote a game? To money could spend better else where.
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Agreed.

Similarly, do they really need to hire celebs to do voice acting and cut scenes? Pretty sure they can get amateurs doing a good job too for cheap. I dont get a sense gamers buy games because Hollywood Dude X is in a game. Maybe for movies and tv shows it works. But I dont think I've ever read or heard someone saying they are amped up to buy a game because a celeb is acting in it, unless it's something like Tony Hawk that went with the Xtreme sports craze in the 90s and 2000s.

But games want to be Hollywood so bad. Its their next step in media stardom. So that leads to more budget, cut scenes, celebs, tons of dialogue etc...

A game like Tetris and Balatro isnt Hollywood one bit. But a SP heavy game can be.
 
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They went overboard with Alan Wake 2 budget and had to wait a long, long time before they started getting profits from the game. I think it's going to be okay, Control 2 will still have a significantly higher budget than the first game.
 
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