Tag Archives: David Polfeldt

In a feature on Gamasutra, various high-profile developers have discussed what they wish to see from next-gen systems. Epic game founder Tim Sweeny participates in the discussion, as does Capcom’s Christian Svensson, Carl Jones, Crytek’s director of global business development, Carl Jones, and DICE GM Karl-Magnus Troedsson among others.

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Speaking at the Annual BMO Capitol Markets Interactive Entertainment conference this morning, Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemot said that newly acquired RTS studio Massive is going to be put to work on getting Ubi into the MMO field.

“We just bought it from them since those guys have Blizzard so they didn’t need that studio as much as we do, and those guys are extremely strong in RTS, so they are going to help us also get closer to the MMO space,” he said.

“Our goal there is to go first with light MMOs…that have been extremely popular in China but are also coming in the U.S. and Europe and are generating lots of good revenue, so our goal is first to start with light MMOs, and then in the future also come with RPG and RTS, also in the MMO space.”

Welcome to Clancy, boys. Thanks, Kotaku.

World in Conflict developer Massive Entertainment may be up for sale, but VP David Polfeldt reckons it could be the best thing to happen to the firm.

“It’s exciting when you’ve been inside a publisher for six years, and we haven’t been really shopping for projects or investigating our network to see what’s out there,” he told VG247.

“It’s a very exciting world that suddenly opens up. If things work out this could well be a really, really interesting and positive move for Massive.”

Polfeldt continued, saying the critical acclaim of RTS World in Conflict has considerably eased the process of gaining interest from publishers.

“I mean, I remember trying to find publisher deals and it was just so incredibly hard that you’d kill yourself,” he said.

“And six years later you come back to market with a 90-plus game at your back and the situation is not as hard as it was ten years ago, for sure. That’s been quite a pleasant surprise.”

Speaking exclusively to VG247, Massive Entertainment’s senior execs have revealed that they’re already in talks for a potential sale of the World in Conflict developer, following now-confirmed news that Activision is to sell the outfit as a result of its merger with Blizzard.

“It seems like we have plenty of options,” said company president and founder Martin Walfisz, talking at Develop last week. “We’ve had some good meetings here.”

He added: “Being a part of a merger like this is a strange situation, because obviously the new organisation has to look over all of its assets, everything it owns and its strategy for the future. For the past six month’s we’ve been waiting for the merger to go through and to understand whether they see us as a part of their future or not.

“Apparently they didn’t want an RTS studio in Europe, and to be honest we would have loved to have worked with Activision, but we’re pretty confident in our capabilities and there are not many studios that can match our quality.”

The firm is currently working on the console versions of World in Conflict – Soviet Assault for PS3 and 360 – and has expanded expertise outside the PC space as a result.

“We’re working on the console versions [of World in Conflict] together with Swordfish,” said VP David Polfeldt. “In the past year or so we’ve been increasing our console capabilities, going from PC to having a really good understanding of console as well.”

Activision won’t publish the console titles, however, which are now also on the market.

“Activision won’t publish [Soviet Assault], no,” said Walfisz. “That’s part of the whole situation now. In theory they could sell World in Conflict separately from Massive. I think that any buyer would like to make sure it goes together, but we don’t own it. Activision owns it, so that’s their call.”

While options are opening for the developer, the company is now effectively in limbo. Walfisz was confident, though, that Massive will pull through.

“I think that right now everyone is in ‘wait and see’ mode and just want to know what the future holds,” he said.

“But Massive has been in tough situations before in the past 12 years, and we’ve always come out stronger. Most of the guys in the company at least have faith in our ability to find a really interesting future.”