In an interview with Eurogamer, former Guerrilla Cambridge Art Directors Alex Kanaris and Tom Jones revealed that the team was still working on new content for RIGS Mechanized Combat League when Sony decided to close the studio in January.
As Jones explained, perhaps the saddest part about the surprise closure is that RIGS didn’t get to go where they wanted it to be:
It was [a] challenging couple of years. I think we made a great game which is why it was sad the studio shut. We were still working on more stuff for it, getting more levels and more DLC out for the community.
The thing that’s the saddest, perhaps, is that RIGS never got the chance to grow and go to where we wanted it to be, but it did a good job of pushing VR and setting a benchmark, perhaps, for other developers to follow.
But you can’t work in the games industry without living with the chance of the studio shutting down. Sony is a company that has to manage its costs effectively. It was a surprise and very sad, obviously a tough decision for everyone involved and not one I suspect Sony took lightly. Fortunately, most of the people there have gone on to other things now, but these things happen.
Despite getting interest from other studios for jobs, Kanaris and Jones decided to go indie, forming Polygon Treehouse in February 2017. Their first game is Röki, a Scandinavian fantasy-inspired point-and-click adventure:
As Jones added, Röki is the type of game they couldn’t have made at Guerrilla Cambridge:
Traditionally, being part of Sony pushing new hardware has challenges. Chasing that hardware, developing, and keeping up with that is very tricky. Often, artistically, you have to make compromises here and there and make concessions where you don’t feel you have to. Where as this is more liberating.
Röki is expected in 2018, but platforms haven’t been announced and a decision on funding hasn’t been made yet.
[Source: Eurogamer]
