Back in March, when Warner Brothers founded a studio in Montreal, they announced that the studio would be focusing on games relating to the DC Comics franchise. Today, those intentions have been made more clear, and it doesn’t seem to be what the employees of the growing studio had in mind.
Talking to Quebec based Lapresseaffaires (Google Translate link), Martin Carrier of WB Montreal noted that the plans for the fledgling studio involved developing casual games involving mobile phones, free-to-play systems utilizing microtransactions and potentially Facebook. Mr. Carrier gave his reasons for the more casual focus (translation/localization mine):
“With six other video game studios, Warner is already doing big (AAA) productions. There is a need for online games at Warner, we want to become specialists in the online gaming business.”
The article also notes that the studio – employing 26 people as of now – hasn’t received the news well, with some even threatening leaving the company. Well, then. I’m sure it must be a shock to the system to come to a big studio with stars in your eyes, thinking that you’re going to make the next Halo, only to walk in and be told “yeah, you need to crap out an iPhone game, and you’ll be working with the Facebook team as well”. But unfortunately for those at WB Montreal, the alternatives to this are much worse.
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