Casey Hudson, game director of Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, has revealed a few details about the upcoming RPG through an interview with Bloomberg. Among other things, he reiterated that the title will come out before 2030. While he couldn’t commit to a release window just yet, Hudson said that he didn’t want to spend five to seven years working on a single project. He also confirmed that generative AI isn’t being used for the game, calling the technology “creatively soulless” and “unhelpful”.
Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic also won’t be an incredibly long game. “Bigger isn’t necessarily better,” Hudson explained. “If I’m excited about a game and then I find out that it’s 200 hours long — even if I have no ambition to actually finish it — I wonder, if I put 20 hours in, will I even be out of act one? A lot of players just want to play something and finish it.”
In the same interview, former NetEase executive Simon Zhu revealed that he is funding the project, along with others, as part of his new company named GreaterThan Group. To achieve his goals of publishing interesting projects, Zhu has confirmed that the company has raised $40 million so far and has also gotten commitments for almost $60 million more. While he didn’t want to name any of the investors due to privacy concerns, Zhu said that, “They’re all very successful individuals — gaming and tech entrepreneurs.”
As for why he wanted to run his own holding company that could invest in the development of video games, he said that it comes down to the fact that many of the major players in the market have walked away from the medium, preferring to put their money into other enticing technologies, like AI. “Big tech walked away; the capital walked away,” Zhu said. “Now, they love AI investment.”
“You can have player satisfaction,” Zhu continued. “You can have commercial success. You can have the achievement of art. You don’t need to compromise or sacrifice one thing for the other. Let’s give the best creator the opportunity to work on a dream project. Everyone wins.”
However, he also noted that the industry has started seeing some growth again, and the consumer base hasn’t suffered from instability when compared to other markets.
“It’s not about commercial success alone,” he said. “It’s about making a good case that we can make good money and provide good entertainment to people in a decent and honest way.”
Along with Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, GreaterThan Group is also funding BulletFarm on a new shooter project. The studio is led by David Vonderhaar, who has previously worked on Call of Duty games during his time at Treyarch. Vonderhaar has explained that the studio’s new title won’t be like Call of Duty. Rather, he said that it would be like “if David Lynch made shooters” and that “it is not a Call of Duty killer.”
In the meantime, Arcanaut Studios, the developer of Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, is continuing to grow its team, bringing in industry veterans who have previously worked on projects like Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
