WHAT


INDEPENDENT MEANS TO


PRIVATE DIVISION


Private Division’s Michael Worosz and Blake Rochkind sat down with Vince Pavey to tell him all about Take-Two’s independent - but not indie - developer label


Y


Michael Worosz (left) and Blake Rochkind (right), head of all things (and Take-Two CSO) and head of business development at Private Division respectively


ou’ve probably played a Private Division game in the last half a decade, and you likely had a good time with it. First set up as an indie boutique label back in 2017, the sub-brand has since


been responsible for some of the most popular critical darlings in recent memory like The Outer Worlds, Hades and OlliOlli World. If Take-Two Interactive is the predictable but reliable patriarch of


its game development family, then Private Division is the cool uncle, bringing his treats around your house from his travels further afield. It also tends to be the home of new and inventive intellectual properties for its parent company, with its releases usually carrying more prestige and excitement than its annual franchises and sports games do. But how did it end up operating on that level? “We like to say independent, not indie, and we do that deliberately to


connote that our releases are of higher quality than the large numbers of indistinguishable games that might be on Steam,” says the head of Private Division, Michael Worosz. “Our corporate strategy at Take-Two is to sustain our existing long term franchises with vibrant new versions, and also plant the seeds for new intellectual property. The games industry, not unlike other other parts of the entertainment industry, continues to


46 | MCV/DEVELOP January 2023


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