Will Snowdrop help create movies? Will Massive work with more Disney properties in the future? We’ve talked with the studio’s managing director in L.A.
On the eve of Ubisoft Forward in Los Angeles we got the chance to drop by its venue, The Magic Box, to sit down with Massive Entertainment’s Thomas Andrén. The company’s managing director welcomed Gamereactor and was willing to talk all things Massive from a more human, studio-wide point of view. This was complementary and in contrast to the other two more creative interviews that we also filmed with his developers to learn more about the company’s two upcoming AAA, open world, action-adventure, movie-inspired blockbusters: Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora and Star Wars Outlaws.
Here you can watch the full chat with subtitles, but we’ve extracted a few excerpts below for those of you who rather keep reading…
“Yeah, we’re super excited”, Andrén admits when asked about the impact Star Wars Outlaws’ reveal had in the team a few hours before, at the Xbox Games Showcase and how Massive and Ubisoft seemed to be ‘stealing the show’ in a way. “The feeling in the team, I was watching it with the team when we were preparing Ubisoft Forward, and the overall feeling is just, it’s such a pleasure to have the opportunity to show what we’re working on to the fans. So, we’re super happy that we got this out now”.
“I think passion all comes from our talent in the studio”, he adds later in the conversation on the same topic. “Everything we do comes from the ground up so to say, that’s where the creativity happens, and I think that, overall, I would say passion comes from our talent”.
So, coming from Avatar, now Star Wars, what can Massive add to such beloved franchises in the gaming format given their principles?
“Overall, Massive is a studio focusing on quality, so of course that is the core of what we do”, describes the MD. “We also have two amazing teams working with some of the biggest entertainment IPs in the world right now. And the collaboration we have globally also within Ubisoft, our partners in Ubisoft to create this game, it’s a great opportunity for us right now”.
If there’s anyone out there who doesn’t know, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora (which is looking great after our first impressions) comes as the result of the close collaboration between Massive Entertainment and James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment, so we asked about this collab to turn the movie’s lore into a playable world.
