You guys are working with Microsoft again, huh?
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Taipalvesi: Yes. Yes we are. But then again, how we started this was a developer-to-developer relationship with SmileGate. That's been the strand for us for the longest time. And then SmileGate branched out and partnered with Microsoft. We're extremely happy to be working with these guys again, because there's a lot of friends that we have on this side of the table.
Puha: A lot of the same people we worked with on Quantum Break are still there.
You're back doing a Microsoft exclusive, like it's 2013.
Puha: Yeah, but for us it's like, we're working on the single-player content and the campaign. And then a lot of the other things are like, well, that's not really our concern, which is a nice place to be in.
Did you guys know anything about Crossfire when contact was made? It's not a big game over here yet. But did you have to do research, find out what it was about, play the game? How did you react to that initial contact?
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Taipalvesi: I've been big in esports for quite a long time so I had heard of it. I had heard there's this game being played by millions, but because its availability in Europe wasn't that high, it wasn't really on my radar. But as soon as these guys contacted us, I was like, okay, so now is the perfect time for me because I now have a reason to actually dig in and try to find out more about this game and this IP.
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Crossfire has over 650 million players. You're making the campaign for the biggest game in the world.
Puha: You hit the nail on the head - not the coffin.
Not yet!
Puha: That's exactly how we also looked at it. That's an interesting place to be to get to flex our muscles and get to make a first-person shooter. A lot of us want to make an FPS. Like, what would that look like?
You're not known for FPS.
Taipalvesi: No. this is the first FPS we've done. But what we are known for is world-building, interesting characters and everything else. So it was a very, very interesting mental mind map. What do we need to know from Crossfire in order for us to be able to mentally construct the sandbox for ourselves? How do we play in this space? And then start to do the world-building as well as character-building.
It feels like a bizarre fit. Remedy, developer of esoteric third-person adventure games such as Control, Quantum Break …
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