GreedFall Developer Blog - Building a New World, Studio Acquired by Bigben Interactive
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If you head on over to Focus Home Interactive's forums, you'll find a new developer blog for Spiders' upcoming colonial-themed action-RPG GreedFall. This latest installment is dedicated to GreedFall's island of Teer Fradee, it's mysteries, history, and purpose. Check it out:
Hi everyone,
Welcome back to our devblog series dedicated to GreedFall – the one-of-a-kind RPG developed by Spiders and coming to Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC on September 10.
We’re taking a look at this new world, specifically created for GreedFall, with Jehanne Rousseau, Lead Writer and CEO at Spiders, as well as Cyril Tahmassebi, Artistic Director.
Building a new world
Teer Fradee is a new place both for the player launching GreedFall for the first time, as well as the colonizers who have just arrived there. The island is a solitary entity, old and full of mysteries, encouraging players delve into its story and unveil its secrets. When building the Island of Teer Fradee as well as the Old Continent, the development team were committed to starting from scratch.
GreedFall isn’t Jehanne’s first time building a universe. While the creative process is complex, she finds it enthralling. Her first step is selecting a time and a place to act as reference. Environment is key, since it almost always dictates how people live and how creatures and plantlife develop. The economy, history, and spirituality underpinning this world must also be thoroughly considered.
Even though the most difficult part of the creative process isn’t populating the world with creatures and plants, it's still the means by which the player discovers the strangeness of the new world. The biggest challenge is consolidating all the creative choices made by the team.
More than an Island: a character
Cyril, Artistic Director at Spiders, explains that even before starting work on new concepts for this mysterious place, he aimed to approach the Island of Teer Fradee as if it was a character. He started by visualizing the Island as a person, imagining what they would physically look like, and what their story might be.
In searching for a visual theme for the emotions they wanted to convey with Teer Fradee, Cyril landed on the season of autumn. For him, autumn was perfect for Teer Fradee and a great choice for the imagery they wanted. With its golden light and dark shadows, autumn’s wilting vegetation is both a memento of the past and a portent of change. Reminiscence and change are inherent to autumn, making it perfect for illustrating what is happening on the island.
Everything serves a purpose on Teer Fradee
History is crucial in GreedFall, and creating a detailed timeline was fundamental to the storytelling. Everything that happened on Teer Fradee prior to the game impacts what the player is going through, and enhances the narrative, visuals, and even gameplay.
Teer Fradee is both a place, a vast space composed of numerous natural landscapes with intermingling towns and villages, and a character, with its own unique identity and wants. Spiders wants to ensure players understand that this entity has a personal history and identity, and that each place on the Island has its own reason to exist; be it cultural, economic, historical, or otherwise. As the player explores the many young colonies and native villages the ancient ruins and the holy sites that hum with magic, the player should get the feeling that everything has a purpose.
In other news, the game's developers, Spiders, have been acquired by Bigben Interactive, following such studios like Cyanide and Eko Software. What this means for the publishing prospects of GreedFall remains to be seen, however it's worth to note that Cyanide's Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood, that was initially supposed to be published by Focus Home, eventually switched publishers over to Bigben.
Here's a press release with some additional details:
Bigben announces the signing of an agreement for the acquisition of Spiders, a French video game development studio specializing in action and role-playing games.
After the acquisition of 3 studios in the last 18 months, this new strategic operation allows Bigben to assert its position as a developer-publisher while strengthening its expertise in content production for succesful genres still missing in its portfolio.
Spiders, a French studio known for its creativity and the quality of its games
Created in 2008 by former Monte Cristo TM developers who previously worked together on the Silverfall TMgame, Spiders has specialized for several years in the action and role-playing segment and relies on a large experience in home consoles. The studio thus developed 6 games including the iconic Mars: War Logs TM set on Mars, Bound by Flame, a RPG (1) medieval-fantastic title which met with a great commercial success andThe Technomancer TM, a RPG Cyberpunk. The new game Greedfall TM, eagerly awaited by the gaming community, will be released in September with a unique visual identity inspired by the Baroque art of 17th century Europe.
A senior team serving ambitious projects
Based in Paris, the studio now has about 30 employees and uses its own Silk Engine development engine. This integrates all the functionalities from last generation technologies and enables the development of genres for all formats, PC and home consoles.
This transaction allows Bigben to acquire a remarkable know-how, accumulated over many productions by confirmed developers recognized for the high quality of their games.
By integrating Bigben's Gaming business unit, Spiders will leverage the commercial and marketing strength of an established publisher to increase the distribution of its games and benefit from the emulation generated by belonging to a group of talented studios. Jehanne Rousseau, current CEO and co-founder of the studio, will continue to lead Spiders with the aim of developing the creative and innovative aspect of its productions.
Expanding editorial positioning
Bigben's editorial positioning is thus widened after :The investment in Spiders studio will now allow the Bigben group to cover the entire world of role-playing games.
- The purchase of the Cyanide studio, which allowed it to extend its offer to major genres not yet represented in its portfolio, such as cycling simulations, turn-based games or stealth games;
- The increased stake in Kylotonn Racing, which secured a strong position in the racing simulation game segment for cars and bikes;
- and the acquisition of the Eko Software studio, which allowed it to increase its presence on genres popular with gamers such as "Action-RPG"(2) and collective sports simulations.
An acquisition fitting in the BIGBEN 2022 strategy
This new external growth fits perfectly into the BIGBEN 2022 plan, which aims at making Bigben one of the reference leaders in 'AA' video games.
By expanding its research and development division with this new recognized player in the development of video games in France, Bigben is integrating additional skills that will enable it to further strengthen the upstream structure of its Gaming sector, and create value by offering contents long-awaited by an ever- changing video game market.
The Publishing cluster of Bigben will consist of 7 development sites (6 in France and 1 in Canada) employing nearly 300 developers supported by a Publishing team of more than 40 people.
The final completion of the acquisition, to be fully paid in cash, is scheduled for early September 2019 after fulfilment of the usual conditions precedent for this type of transaction.
"This acquisition fits perfectly with Bigben's strategy to increase its know-how in the development of video games in the AA strategic segment. We are delighted to welcome the talents of Spiders who will strengthen our Development unit and participate in new and even more ambitious projects.” said Alain Falc, Chairman and CEO of Bigben.
"We look forward to joining the Bigben Group, a reference player in the video games industry whose strategic vision we fully share. Becoming part of the Bigben Group is a unique opportunity to accelerate our development alongside other quality studios, by integrating an environment conducive to the creation of ever more qualitative games.“ said Jehanne Rousseau, CEO and co-founder of Spiders.
