The Big IO Interactive Interview: Hakan Abrak on James Bond, Dispatch, and the GTA 6 delay

IO Interactive’s 007 First Light is one of the key games of today’s Xbox Partner Preview. Ahead of the showcase, GamesIndustry.biz caught up with IO Interactive’s CEO, Hakan Abrak, to find out more about how the developer has blossomed as an independent since being dropped by Square Enix in 2017.

So, what’s the news from IO Interactive?

Well, in the context of Hitman turning 25, we just want to make some noise, honestly. In times where most of the news we are getting these days is a bit bleak and dark, it’s good to have a bit of light, right?

We are a AAA independent studio – and we’re very busy and there’s a lot at stake here – but it’s going really well, and this week is another eventful week where we have quite a lot of news coming out about both Bond and Hitman.

In the Xbox showcase we are going to show a nice trailer focusing on the Aston Martin car – we’ve shown a DB before, but now it’s the Aston Martin hypercar, which I think Aston Martin plans to launch commercially next year, which fits with the game.

That does make me worry a little in the sense that we’ve had instances where licensed content has been removed or a game has been taken off sale when a license expires. What kind of deals have you done about that behind the scenes?

I’ll talk to my legal people, but I’m pretty sure that the car we have in here is for the game’s lifetime. And without going into too much detail, it is a part of things that are happening in the game as well. Hopefully the game will be a household title and a classic for decades, and it would be weird if all of a sudden content from the game was removed. So we’re making sure of these things.

You’ve got Eminem coming to Hitman as an Elusive Target as well, right?

I think for now, that’s the crown jewel of what we’ve been doing on Hitman with these celebrities having fun doing these different missions, mainly on the Elusive Target track. It’s freaking amazing, honestly, and he’s so cool. And the music – there’s some specific things for this mission that he’s doing from his album and some of the old tracks, and it ties into this whole ‘kill Slim Shady’ thing from his own story arc. We got to work with him to kill Slim Shady.

I think generally with Hitman: World of Assassination, we are freakishly blessed with that. In 2017, we were almost done for, thrown out like a wet cat. But what we’ve built up… really that vision has come to fruition and is still going strong. It’s unfathomable, but almost 85 million people have played World of Assassination, and we have well over 25 million copies sold. For a single-player game that started in 2016, almost ten years ago, we’re averaging more than a million monthly active users.

“In 2017, we were almost done for, thrown out like a wet cat”

I really think we are onto something with a single-player game-as-a-service. In our industry, we talk about all these cancelled games, and live games being very complex and expensive, and these big bets that have gone south. And I think World of Assassination is an example showing that everything doesn’t have to be on steroids and crazy. We have a small but highly specialized team that is supporting World of Assassination, and I think it’s very healthy for the fans and the community, and it’s very important and healthy for us.

On that Xbox showcase, we are also going to talk about the partnership with Xbox ROG Ally X, and the compatibility with Hitman – and we’re also doing a partnership on James Bond with that. And we’ve just seen the console from Steam, which is very exciting. These things are a perpetual cycle about ‘is this the end of the console era’ or ‘PC gaming’s dead’ – this just goes on and on and on. But I think seeing these handhelds coming, I think it’s just going to be easier to play these games.

It must be helpful as a developer to have a target to aim for in terms of PC specs.

I mean, when my beard was darker, I remember a generation shift was a huge thing. It was insane. ‘Oh, maybe the next PlayStation will be in two years, what do we do about that if the game comes out just before or after?’ It always seemed like a paradigm shift.

Today, this year, I think Hitman came out on four or five new platforms, like the Switch 2 and mobile. It’s just engines and techniques, and as these handhelds are getting more powerful as well, it is getting easier. I wouldn’t say it’s easy, but it is getting easier to do this.

I suppose flexibility is more important than power now, in a sense. It’s not necessarily about having the most powerful engine or the best graphics. It’s more, ‘Can I mould this game to work on as many platforms as possible?’

I think there’s some compromises that people live with, that they understand, because they can sit in the car and play on the handheld. It’s okay that it doesn’t run the highest resolution with 120 frames per second. But then again, I think all of these handhelds will also stream. I do frequent trips to the US, and the airline I’m using just announced a collaboration with Starlink, so for the long flights to the States, there’s going to be broadband internet. So it doesn’t really matter whether it’s your iPad with a GeForce or Xbox app or whatever handheld, you can run AAA games very smoothly by using the internet.

I wanted to talk a bit about the studio, because you’re a rare breed of independent developer doing AAA games. What’s the secret to your survival? How have you managed to do this?

I think part of the secret is not to be blinded by too many opportunities. As you get success with some of the things you’re doing, you also see opportunities everywhere. I think it’s about balancing your culture, it’s balancing the people you invite into your studio to be a part of your existing team, and the time it takes to preserve and keep this oneness is extremely important. I think if you overheat that, it can be problematic, and these things do translate into your products.

“We were really adamant about not having more than around 140 people in one physical location”

We’ve established ourselves a bit differently than other studios. We have 500 people at IO Interactive, and most of the people could just fit into this studio here in Copenhagen. But we were really adamant about not having more than around 140 people in one physical location, because we don’t want to develop a factory mentality. It’s about keeping this hunger and keeping this agility.

So keeping team sizes small helps?

Yeah. We don’t work with thousands of people on projects. We believe there are diminishing returns with inefficiency. I wouldn’t say we work in small teams either, but we try to find a sweet spot with highly specialized people.

I think a lot of the problems we’re seeing today are the result of things getting overheated in the coronavirus times. There was a lot of investment in the industry, and I think a lot of people thought that they could retain their culture and grow ten times the size within six months. And when culture and momentum doesn’t follow, I understand that some of the investors are a bit more hesitant today.

Well, let’s talk a little bit about investment. It’s not cheap making a big AAA James Bond game, so where’s the money coming from for that? Is it just from Hitman, or have you brought in investors?

It is just from Hitman. Again, as I said, we are extremely blessed with the World of Assassination being so successful. We have three main products ongoing now. We have James Bond, obviously, and we have Hitman that we are supporting and growing, and then we have a multiplayer fantasy project – we’re working with some partners on that that we’ll talk about at a later point. But James Bond is fully funded by us. We are completely independent.

We’ve always had this dream of having more than one project. We love Hitman, we’re proud of it, but we do see ourselves as a multi-project studio, and our big dream is to not only launch new IPs but actually have them be ongoing successfully.

Some of the things you’re seeing in Hitman, we are applying to Bond as well. So it’s not only the most expensive, most ambitious thing we are doing, but it’s also meant as a journey together with our community and with the fans. A lot of those learnings from Hitman, we are applying to Bond.

And Bond is done! The game’s completely playable from start to end. We are obviously super busy polishing and bug fixing and whatnot, because we are gunning for spring next year, but the whole game is done. It’s been a long journey, six years almost, but I’m very proud that we are here.

You must be very pleased that GTA 6 has kindly moved out of your way as well.

It would be a lie not to say that obviously spring looks really good. I want to say in the same breath that GTA 6 is a welcome thing for the industry. I do believe a lot of gamers who maybe haven’t played for a while will get into things again, and generally for the industry as a whole, I think that will be amazing.

In the summer, I spoke to someone from IO Interactive who said that anyone in the company can choose to work on any of the three major projects you’re doing, in any location. Is that true?

Yeah, this is part of how we keep the fire going, how we keep people engaged. We are very talent driven: our motto is impactful games, impactful people. And we want to keep things exciting for people, which is part of why we want to be a multi-project studio. Some people might like fantasy, some people might like a hero, and other people might like an anti-hero story.

It doesn’t matter where you work from – Malmö, Barcelona, Brighton, Istanbul, or Copenhagen – as long as you have the chops, you have the skills and the drive. But we work within the same time zone, and that’s why we don’t have a studio in India or in the US.

But what if everyone decides, for example, that they want to work on James Bond, but you still need people to work on the other games?

So it’s not entirely a free-for-all on what project to work on. When we hire people, we do look at what is your thing out of the three projects we offer. So the location is not a limit, and most of the time the project’s not a limit as well. We are looking at the studio needs, of course, but we also know the results from somebody who really wants to work on something – the outcome of that’s probably going to be better.

There’s also your veterans. How do you keep your veterans? We have a lot of seniors, they’re still sticking around – some people have been working here for 25 years. So how do you keep them engaged? And even though you might really want them on Project A, if they’re like, ‘Hey, Hakan, it would really get my juices going again if I can work on this other project’, then you do that, because you want to keep that super talent happy.

Recently we saw Dispatch gaining success with an episodic release model, which is obviously something that you did with Hitman in 2016. There was a sense that it worked very well with Dispatch because the episodes were released quite close together, whereas one of the criticisms of the original Hitman launch was that the episodes were too far apart. Were you following Dispatch, and will you be taking any learnings from that?

Yeah, I’m playing Dispatch myself, I think half of the globe is. It’s freaking fantastic, it’s a very, very nice game.

“I’m playing Dispatch myself, I think half of the globe is. It’s freaking fantastic”

Absolutely. It is a bit different though, right? We were, for sure, too early with the concept, and there were many, many mistakes made. We were also banging on that one Hitman level can yield 50 hours plus of gameplay, whereas the Dispatch structure is a bit different. It’s a much more episodic format, where yes, you can go back and kiss Mandy, or not kiss her – I actually went back and replayed that part – but when there’s less replay opportunity, then you want to have the next episode coming sooner.

So yes, there are learnings on that, and I think that’s a huge topic. What is the future of gaming? Do all games need to be 40 hours? One of the things I enjoy a lot is short TV series, just six episodes, especially the British ones. I love that, it’s not too long. So I think it’s very interesting, we are thinking about these things for future instalments.

Square Enix has been reducing its Western presence recently, and I’m wondering how you feel about this, given your history with the company. You seem to have thrived without a big publisher behind you, and I’m wondering whether independence, flexibility, and nimbleness is what’s needed in the modern environment.

First of all, I just want to say that under Square Enix, we were treated really, really well. We actually had a studio-centric structure under Square Enix. That said, it is difficult, maybe, for a Japanese company with the kind of bet they made in taking over Western studios, so that might have posed some challenges. But then again, all big publishers are facing challenges universally right now – I don’t think it’s only Square Enix.

I think some companies will thrive under a bigger corporation. In our case, spreading our wings and feeling the responsibility of the wrong and right decisions we do within our four walls has been a good thing. There’s a lot that goes into this: there’s timing, there’s luck, there’s hard work and momentum, and some people believe in karma as well. Who knows? But for us, it feels very real going to work every day, and I enjoy it like I did 20-plus years ago. So it’s good for us.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.