Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2, out today on PC and consoles (you can find our review here), is a huge game in Saber Interactive's strategy. However, there's more than just Space Marine 2 to the studio's plan to navigate the current crisis of the videogame industry, which saw many studio closures and even more mass layoffs.
At Gamescom 2024, I had the great opportunity to chat about this with Saber Interactive Chief Creative Officer (CCO) Tim Willits, an industry veteran who worked for 23 years at id Software. Having witnessed several ups and downs during his career, he expressed confidence that good games and development teams will always be successful—as long as they can properly manage their business, chiefly the game's budget.
I have seen all the cycles. I started in 1995, and I remember the death of consoles; I remember the death of the PC. I remember that, yes, there's always cycles, but good games and good teams will always be successful. One of the things that Saber has done well is that we have studios around the world and we focus on the right scopes for our games. We focus on the right deal for our games. Each of our studios has multiple projects, so we don't have 200 people sitting around waiting for pre-production to finish. We're very smart with our money, and we focus on the core aspects of the game. We focus on what's truly fun, whether it's a $5 million game, $10 million game, or $50 million; it doesn't matter.
But if that core game loop is not there, it's not going to be a success, and we've done well by managing our teams, having teams and around the world at different cost structures, and finding the most talented people. If you're a world-class artist, you don't need to be in California. Some teams have, especially in North America, 150-200 people. They pay everyone well. If your burn rate is a couple of million dollars a month and you wanna change an idea three months later, that's like $6 million wasted. We can make a game for $6 million.
That's one of the problems; you have these huge teams working on one game. If they want to iterate, that's expensive. Each studio at Saber has a main team working on something, and it's a natural ramp, and we have people experimenting with ideas that are starting some really small projects. Maybe five people want to work on an idea, and they can change it, they iterate, they're not spending millions of dollars. As soon as that idea is solid and we're happy with it, after going through our evaluations and our gates, then we ship people over to that project.
We also have a culture at Saber where everyone can work on every project. I've seen studios in North America where people are like, I'm on the red team; I'm not going to work on the blue team. But here, we're all Team Saber. For instance, we are ramping people off Space Marine 2 because it's coming out soon. Now, those people will work on Jurassic Park Survival or Toxic Commando. That's how we remain lean and make money. We don't have ridiculously expensive budgets, so we don't have to sell four million copies to be a success, you know what I'm saying? There are games in North America that, if they don't sell 4 to 6 million copies, they are a failure. That is dangerous.
When asked whether the industry would follow EA's path of slowly moving away from licensed IPs to reduce the impact of royalties on game budgets, Willits was adamant that would not be the case and instead pointed to the need to make the right game with the right budget in the right part of the world, as Saber does.
Oh no, no. We're working on a Jurassic Park game. That's one of the world's biggest IPs, and we have other things we are working on that we haven't announced yet. No, you have to manage how much money you are spending on your team. You have to manage how your teams are working.
If you have the right brand, the right IP, it can really benefit you. Even we have had great success working with other IPs. Look at World War Z. I believe the game has made more money than the movie did—I believe, but I'm not sure about that. But you have to manage your teams and your business, and you have to make the right game with the right budget in the right part of the world. That's what we do well.
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