Dishonored Dev: “Too Many Sequels, Established IPs Ruling the Market”

If it’d been any other member of Arkane Studios, the team behind the upcoming Dishonored, people wouldn’t have paid his comments heed. However, it’s Viktor Antonov – the man behind Half-Life 2’s breath-taking City 17.

It may have been a good couple of years since the release of Valve’s opus, but Antonov feels the industry has fallen behind in that time.

It’s been a poor, poor five years for fiction in the video game industry. There have been too many sequels, and too many established IPs that have been ruling the market. And a lot of them are war games. And they’re great projects and great entertainment, but there’s a lack of variety today.

Artists and art directors should make their own life a little bit harder by pushing management to take more artistic risks, and use the technology to a better, higher level.

He also felt developers “shouldn’t try to please everybody at the same time and try to make easy, diluted projects.”