currently going by the inspired codename ‘Game 1’, is one that Sundberg says would not get made were he still at Avalanche Studios, which suggests that it wasn’t a difficult decision to leave the company and set up anew. “Not at all,” he says, quickly adding, “not in any bad
way, but after I sold the company to Nordisk Film it wasn’t mine anymore. I’m not very good at maintenance. I like to build stuff and since it was all in the hands of the management that had been there for a few years, there were less things I could do to affect where I could see the company going and what drove me forward and what I was passionate about. So it was a good time for me to leave, and I think it was good for everyone.” So what came first, the idea for the new game, or the
desire to leave Avalanche? “The idea for a game came first but it was almost
simultaneous. It is a passion project and it’s the game that I really want to make and being able to invest in that on my own has been absolutely fantastic. I know exactly what I want from this game. I can tell everyone here exactly what I want. Obviously I’m not dictating stuff by saying that, but I have this vision, mostly in my head, that I’m presenting constantly to the team. How it evolves, with our discussions within the team, with everyone’s input and so on, has just been a fantastic process. I would never have taken the idea to another developer or publisher and tried to pitch it. I’ve been standing too many times with a hat in my hand. I’m done with that.”
WET ÉPÉE Soon after founding Liquid Swords in 2020, Sundberg said that he wanted to make a difference in the world
16 | MCV/DEVELOP February 2023
of game development. Not just a different kind of open world game – different from those that Avalanche seemed likely to greenlight at any rate – but also a different way of making games. “Game development is so extremely complex and what
I’ve found is that so many developers and publishers are just over complicating the process and that stands in the way of quality. That’s something that I really want to focus on. Quality is a word that everyone uses, but when it comes to the end of the project, so many put less of a priority on quality and more on the business model behind the game. “I don’t want to force anyone to pay for post-launch
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