Why PlayStation bought Returnal developer Housemarque: the inside story
Why PlayStation bought Returnal developer Housemarque: the inside story As Sony Interactive Entertainment acquires Returnal developer Housemarque, GQ speaks to head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst and Housemarque's cofounder Ilari Kuittinen about how the deal was struck and the Finnish studio's future Robert Leedham A Finn, a Brit and a Dutchman all log on to a video call. Alas, head of PlayStation Studios Hermen Hulst isn't quite in the mood for jokes, having watched his football team crash out of the Euros 2020 at the weekend, "You better be careful there…" Besides, we've actually got some exciting news of our own to talk through.
Housemarque, the Helsinki-based game developer behind recent PlayStation 5 hit Returnal, is being acquired by Sony Interactive Entertainment for an undisclosed fee. This is PlayStation's second major purchase in as many years, following the $229 million buyout of Insomniac Games in 2019. Of course, Insomniac would go on to lead the PS5's launch phase with the bestselling one-two combo of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and Spider-Man: Miles Morales, but for Housemarque the future is still very much unwritten.
Having made its name with smaller, arcade-inspired titles stretching back to 2007's Super Stardust HD on the PlayStation 3, Returnal saw its maker go all in on big budget adventuring akin to the revered Uncharted and Horizon series. Albeit "big budget adventuring" with a brain-melting sci-fi twist, all the particle effects in the known universe and a difficulty curve that goes from nought to 100 faster than a Tesla Model S Plaid. To put it another way, Returnal proved Housemarque could expand its horizons while retaining its status as a real gamers' game developer.
Now Ilari Kuittinen, Housemarque's cofounder and managing director, wants to use this acquisition to really break new ground for the studio. He told us how the deal came about and indulged in a bit of Scandi pride while wearing a black, Returnal-branded T-shirt. It has no real relation to the conversation that follows. We just thought it was particularly, delightfully metal...
So how do you organise an acquisition via Zoom these days. You'll have to fill us in.
Ilari Kuittinen: The funny part is that we haven't seen each other during this process in real life. So I guess that makes this a bit extraordinary. Of course, we'd been working with Sony for a long time. And then last year we started to have these discussions. One thing led to another and here we are talking to you now. But we know lots of people from Sony. We've been working with these guys for 15 years. It actually started with helping Hermen's studio...
Hermen Hulst: That was actually super useful. It was easy for me to pick up the phone last year when I've not been in the role for that long. I think it was back in 2006 that Ilari with his core team came down to Amsterdam when I was struggling to get Killzone: Liberation for PSP out the door.
What stood out then was how technically capable the core team was at Housemarque and you've been able to witness that in all of the titles that they've been making pretty much for every single PlayStation platform since. From my perspective, they're the perfect fit for PlayStation Studios with a very strong identity in terms of the kind of games that they make. They always have that super-intense, arcade style, but they've been able to innovate by creating their own genre with a roguelike that's got a nicely layered story on top.
You mentioned Housemarque has already been making games for Sony for a long time, Ilari. Why fully join PlayStation Studios now?
IK: Well, recently we started to do something bigger, something more ambitious and we had a lot of collaboration with various studio teams as well. The results were great and that started to bring some ideas of what the future might look like. What if we could get even closer together and be even more ambitious?
So from your perspective you want to keep doing bigger things and Sony will enable you to do that?
IK: That's certainly the right conclusion there. I think Sony is the partner that's best positioned to help develop even further. Let's face it, these are some of the best game developers in the world. So we're really proud to be part of that group and hope to collaborate and learn from them.
HH: I've been there myself as an independent developer. We'll be able to take the limitations away and to get Ilari, Harri Tikkanen [creative director] and all the core team to focus exclusively on making amazing games. I think this is going to help them grow even further and it will be great for the quality and ambitions.
There are a lot of companies making acquisitions in gaming at the moment. Microsoft just bought Bethesda for $7.5 billion, Facebook has scooped up a lot of developers in the VR space of late and now Sony is purchasing Housemarque. Looking at the industry from the outside, it feels like a bit of an arms race. Is that how you see it, Hermen?
HH: No, not at all. We're very selective about the developers that we bring in. Our last new acquisition was Insomniac [for $229 million in 2019], which has worked out very well. I'm always looking for people that have a similar set of values, similar creative ambitions and work very well with our team that we can further invest in and help grow as creators. It's not like we're going around and just making random acquisitions.
They're very, very targeted acquisitions of teams that we know well. The amount of collaboration between our external development group and Housemarque on the technical side, the production management side and even on the creative side has been so deep. So for us, it just makes so much sense to do that.
Obviously, this is not something you do overnight. Ilari and my team have been working on this for quite a while, but we obviously didn't want to distract the core group at Housemarque that's been working to get this amazing title out.
Clearly Sony is happy with Returnal's commercial performance because we're having this conversation today, but how do you reflect on it from an artistic perspective, Ilari?
IK: Yeah, of course, we are very pleased. But as creatives, you know, it's never like ten out of ten. You have your doubts as to how people are going to react to this combination of pretty unique stuff, right?
What was the biggest lesson you learned from the process of making that game?
IK: There are many, but I think doing this procedurally generated stuff doesn't make your work easier. So it's a very complex game and systems. We learned that making this all work is quite hard, but the results speak for themselves
You have said you're working on an update to the save system for Returnal. What more can you share on that front?
IK: I think we can't share anything at this point. So we'll see what will happen...
Where are you at in terms of your creative process? You've released Returnal and had this acquisition: are you moving on to your next project or is there still more to come from this game?
IK: In general, we are taking a break. People are having their vacations now here in Finland. Some are taking last year's vacations as well. So I guess that's first and then we can start thinking about the future.
We've just spoken about the newfound scale you can achieve through this acquisition. In the past, Housemarque has made its name on smaller titles such as Resogun and Nex Machina. Are the days of making those games gone?
IK: Well, at least initially, I think we're looking into what we've done now and building upon it. Certainly Returnal is kind of a stepping stone for us. When we're thinking about the future titles, they'll maybe be even bigger and even more ambitious.
One of the underrated aspects of the PlayStation 5's success so far has been Sony's ability to publish a string of very different games in the midst of a pandemic. How does acquiring Housemarque broaden the PlayStation Studios portfolio, Hermen?
HH: It's almost hard to imagine launching a PlayStation platform and Housemarque not being present. In that launch window, they've done it time and again. And in terms of the diversity of our offering, Housemarque has a very bespoke style. We talk about "bullet fest", their arcadey gameplay-centric approach to development. They're so good at that, because the combat is so tight. It fills a unique part of our slate of games that people have come to love and for us to take that further to take to the next level with them is just super attractive.
It's also our first studio in Scandinavia, which is really exciting. Because where Ilari and his team are based, their intention is to grow the team and there's a lot of opportunity for us to do that.
To that point, is there anything specific that this acquisition is going to enable to do from a development perspective that wasn't possible before?
IK: I guess this typically depends on what we actually decide to do next. We're not quite sure. But I think we've always been pushing technology, as well. We can do that from now on, even more than we did before since we can concentrate on a platform. So that's a big, big part of it. You know, we have our own VFX engine in the game that we're using and, hopefully, we'll be creating something more on top of that.
HH: And obviously, they'll be invited to forums such as a studio head forum, where we share a lot of initiatives, ideas and technology. It's hard for him to comment coming in from the outside on what he's going to benefit from, but I can tell you from experience it's going to be quite a lot. It's entirely voluntary. He gets to run his team, gets to maintain the culture and we'll obviously protect that. But we're going to be able to offer a lot to Housemarque going forward.
Could you tell us a bit more about that forum? What kind of stuff have you covered recently?
HH: I think the area that Ilari's had some pretty deep experience with over the last 18 months is distributed development when everybody's working at home. It's really important that we try different things out and we share those learnings, because when you're one studio you speak with some friends. But when you have that network of 13 studios globally that are typically quite well organised, but have very different cultures, you can learn a lot.
We also talk a lot about the wellbeing of people. How do you maintain the health of people during the pandemic? We talk about creativity. Any topic that concerns game development is not off limits for these forums that we do.
And Ilari, I just wanted to finish up by asking how you're feeling as the cofounder of the studio? There's a lot of pride involved in these moments but it's also a time for reflection. Can you explain what you're going through?
Well, I'm really happy. This is a very big deal as cofounders, of course, and for the whole team too. I think maybe for the Finnish game studio ecosystem as well. We've established that here in the Nordics, and especially now in Finland, you can find some of the best game developers in the world. There's stuff coming out from the dark north.
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