DAVID POLFELDT

Massive Entertainment’s CEO on sequels, new technology, and the future of videogames

OPM: There’ll be three episodes released post-launch. How important is it to support The Division 2 in this way? David Polfeldt: I am very happy about what we’re planning. I think it’s important to know the game should change after launch. We’re fully anticipating that there will be things that we need to discover about the game, depending on how people play it and what they do and don’t like. That’s where we’ve set it up more like a relationship. We have a first idea of what post-launch should be and we’re planning for the unexpected or for reactions we need to have to community feedback. So it’s a different kind of a plan. It’s not like we have decided everything yet, it depends really on the conversations we will have. OPM: Do games like The Division 2 force developers to work in new ways? DP: Most developers have more of a tunnel vision than they may want to admit. You’re very, very focused on developing your own thing. What we like and what we think is fun, and what we think should be the next stage of evolution for games.

When you’re in that mode you tend to not look at what other people are doing. So you might be playing games but you’re not thinking about them professionally; you’re thinking ‘This is my hobby, in my work I’m exploring this area,’ and they might not be as connected as people sometimes think or would like to claim, but on the other hand it asks a few questions about how we traditionally treat games, as if the material that is on the disc is the game, and today for us, and for many other games, it’s not; that is only the first salvo or the first gift in a longer relationship. It’s the development, and the evolution, and the attention you have to that relationship that is the game.

In The Division 2 we’re taking it up a notch. We’re discovering what happened in Washington, one of the most protected cities in the world, if it could happen there what does that actually say about the situation we’re now facing. And I think that’s almost impossible, at least for me, to not fantasise about another story between one and two, and then another one, you can just play with it so much. OPM: How has The Division changed since launch, and how do those differences affect the sequel? DP: It’s a pretty serious game, and it’s a pretty serious brand. It takes itself seriously as well and it poses some real-life questions also, and I think that’s something you will always debate even if you go the other direction, even if it’s super-jolly and super-light, the publisher might say ‘This seems a little bit too silly’.

Ours was maybe too pretentious, too serious. That was debated and I think we ended up finding the right note, and I think we had that discussion with Ubisoft many, many times because it’s a fine calibration when you hit the note. It’s the same with music, you know? Is it too dark? Does everything have to be this dark? Are all the songs completely black or is there some variation there? Creating The Division is like creating an album – it’s not just one song, you need to have a dynamic also between the different flavours – and I think we got that right. But that was because we debated it a lot. OPM: How will things change in the future, for games and maybe for PS5? DP: I think we live in interesting times. I think there’s a lot going on, particularly on the technology side, hardware side, cloud-based games, or streaming as a distribution channel, also new actors coming in with a lot of interest, old actors coming back as well.

What I love about this time is that no matter how you see it, it will bring games to a bigger audience. Which means that the content creators are actually the winners of this particular revolution, and I’m thinking mostly of streaming when I say that as I think theoretically streaming can bring the games to almost anyone on Earth who has a connected screen, and that’s a huge difference for us, but it’s still content.

What’s fun for a person who owns hardware is usually the same for a person who doesn’t have hardware, so as soon as they get their hands on the content it’s very likely they’ll enjoy it the same as people who can access it today. OPM: It sounds like studios like Massive Entertainment will have the opportunity to do more? DP: For me, I think of this as it changing the power structure a little bit in the industry and it’s biased towards content creators, which I think is great for this industry because it means people who can make great games are going to be the most valuable in this generation, and I think that’s fantastic.

It’s like the movie industry was in the ’50s and the ’60s where you know we couldn’t just produce enough movies, and the people who were making good movies were the ones who were also driving the industry forwards, and that’s kind of a change.

I’ve been in the game industry for so long and when I started we were basically begging someone to pay us to do something that we loved, so the power structure was different, and that’s changing, and I think Ubisoft is also extremely well positioned with the IP portfolio, and because Ubisoft has been so loyal to its own IPs for so long, and now that is going to pay off. I think it’s going to be very interesting in the next ten years. It makes me wish I was 20 again [laughs]. OPM: So who ultimately wins? DP: If you ask me to predict who will be the winner of the ‘streaming war’ I will say I have no idea, except for the people who make the content, they will win either way.

“THEORETICALLY STREAMING CAN BRING THE GAMES TO ALMOST ANYONE ON EARTH.”