Techland’s Tymon Smektala, franchise director for the popular Dying Light series, expects more developers to focus on shorter, standalone games instead of 100-hour AAA blockbusters in the future.
Speaking at Gamescom in Cologne, Smektala discussed the decision-making process behind Techland’s development of Dying Light: The Beast, which was announced during the Opening Night Live presentation this week, as a standalone game.
As the studio explained in its announcement, The Beast began as the second DLC for Dying Light 2, but Smektala said plans changed after a major leak last year, including most of the story details.
“We knew that our most dedicated players, the ones who were most interested in the DLC, would probably see the leak, so the game would be ruined for them. We had a meeting with the staff and discussed what we could do about it. And one of the ideas was that if we could get a new project based on some of the ideas from the DLC. Everyone really liked it.”
The idea was to bring back Kyle Crane, the protagonist of the original Dying Light, and continue his story after a decade of torture and experiments that left him with beast-like abilities.
But since The Beast is now a standalone project, albeit with some elements carried over, it’s now a new story that the franchise’s director says will answer some questions from both previous games. So why not just call it Dying Light 3?
“Because we have other plans for Dying Light 3. We already see the future of the series. Dying Light: The Beast wasn’t really part of that larger plan, but we got excited about the idea.”
Smektala added that The Beast is “definitely more compact” than a big-budget AAA game, comparing it to a double espresso: “It may not be as big as an Americano, but it doesn’t have as much water in it.” The fact that more developers are dedicating time to shorter projects between their major blockbusters makes sense when you look at it from two different perspectives.
“I understand that many players are fascinated by the number of hours that a big game offers. But as players get older, the world around us becomes more and more crowded, and since we have a lot of things that attract our attention, if you have a game that you have to play for 50 to 100 hours, then it’s really hard to find time for it, right?”
Yes!
