'Even with Dead Island there were a lot of moments where we would disagree on the creative vision of the project, so this might have been one of the factors.' 'They had a lot of ideas about how they wanted to run the franchise,' he went on. 'Well you'd have to ask them.' Deep Silver declined comment. Was Deep Silver unhappy with Techland's work? It sounds like Deep Silver turned Techland away. 'I would love to make a direct sequel, but at some point a decision was made.' We can't just make a Dead Island 2 and change the name it's got to be something fresh, it's got to be something unique. 'For us it turned out well, because being forced to come up with a new IP. 'There's always tension between the publisher and developer. 'Well, you know, we had our ups and downs,' Binkowski said. What happened - did Techland and Deep Silver fall out? A year later, at E3 2014, Dead Island 2 was announced - a game made by Spec Ops: The Line developer Yager. Riptide wasn't brilliant but again it wasn't awful.īut a month after Riptide's April 2013 release, Techland announced a new zombie-killing game called Dying Light. Techland made two Dead Island games for Deep Silver: Dead Island, and standalone expansion Dead Island: Riptide. At that point, that was the best decision we could do.' If you play the game thinking that something might happen, you're going to lose the game. It's like playing poker: you have to make a decision with the information you have now. 'At that point we weren't really in a position to negotiate,' he said, 'so that was the best deal we could get. It was Techland's game, Techland's idea, but it wasn't a strong enough entity as a developer to argue. 'Right from the start, the IP was theirs,' Techland game designer Maciej Binkowski told me, referencing publisher Deep Silver (Saints Row, Homefront). Five million sales! And for a new IP! Techland clearly did something right.īut what it didn't do was retain ownership of the IP. In February 2013 the game passed the five million sales mark. Why isn't Polish developer Techland making Dead Island 2? It made the first game, after all.ĭead Island wasn't fantastic but it was successful - very successful.

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