Just Cause dev co-founder says the studio got too big and 'numbers focused,' so he quit and made a $25 open world crime brawler

It's a story we've seen a lot this decade: An experienced videogame developer becomes fatigued by ballooning team sizes and meetings about monetization strategy, and so they walk away to start a smaller studio with funding from private investors and companies like NetEase.

In this case, it's Christofer Sundberg, co-founder of Just Cause developer Avalanche Studios (not to be confused with Hogwarts Legacy developer Avalanche Software). Sundberg sold the studio in 2018, and then quit in 2019 because "the company had become so numbers focused," he told me on a call this week.

"It went from focusing on creating great games to creating great spreadsheets," said Sundberg. "And that's certainly not why I started the company, and it just wasn't for me anymore. So I was really fed up with the whole industry, which is a bit counterintuitive, as I had sold my company, so I had taken money too, and that's what I was complaining about. But for me, it's always been about the games."

(Avalanche declined to comment on Sundberg's remarks.)

A non-compete contract meant Sundberg couldn't start making a new game for a year, and at first he hadn't intended to return to the business at all. Ultimately, though, his interest in games led him to found Liquid Swords, which will release an open world crime brawler called Samson this April.

"I sort of started Liquid Swords to challenge the industry to change the way we are making games, and change the way we're looking at game companies," said Sundberg. "We don't have to be 500 [staff] here in the studio. We don't have to create the massive factory, as long as you work with the right team … We're not here to create funky business models, we're here to create great games, and that's what we focus on and with all its challenges."

I got a brief preview of Samson this week. GTA comparisons are inevitable. The game centers around a bottom-of-the-rung criminal who's in debt to the sort of people who don't ask nicely when interest is due, and begins with him driving around the fictional, Boston-like city of Tyndalston taking illicit jobs for cash, such as beating up his employers' rivals and driving getaway cars. ("Tyndalston" is a mouthful: It comes from Saint William Tyndale, in the way that "Boston" is derived from Saint Botolph.)

"When we get the GTA comparisons, of course it makes sense, just because it's an open world city game" and there isn't much else to compare it to, says mission designer Donald Young, who also spoke to PC Gamer. But emulating GTA isn't the goal, and the comparison really doesn't go far.

For one thing, Samson is obviously not intended to be nearly as expansive as GTA 6, coming from a much smaller team—1% the size, Sundberg guesses. It's also focused on driving and melee combat rather than guns, and has a well-defined structure.

Each day you'll spend action points to take missions that earn you the cash you need to make that day's debt payment. Once you've spent the day's allotment of points, you'll have to hit the hay before you can accept new jobs, whether or not you've earned what you needed to. Naturally, there will be consequences for missed payments.

I didn't get a deep feel for the punching and driving during my brief session, but I was struck by how dense Tyndalston feels. I could weave through traffic on the bigger roads, but had to get creative on narrower city streets where there's less room to break traffic laws without smashing into other cars.

You also can't drive absolutely everywhere: In one mission, I wandered through a small maze of alleys on foot to a junk-filled courtyard nestled among apartment buildings, where my job was to beat up a gang of "wannabes."

"We're trying to pursue fewer things [than GTA]," said Young. "GTA, to me, I would call it a juggernaut. It's just like a game where you can go in and do anything, right, and they have a bunch of systems and content that allow you to play that game however you want, which is great, which is awesome.

"But I think our draw is much more just like, 'You are this guy, it is an open world brawler with some cool car combat and stuff, and we have a cool story, and these cool themes that we think are interesting and thought-provoking within our structure.' … Your experience is going to be a lot more focused."

It's also going to be a lot cheaper. Samson, which Sundberg estimates takes 10-12 hours to play through assuming you're not trying to 100% it, will cost $25 when it releases on Steam and the Epic Games Store on April 8.