The developers aren’t interested in sacrificing art for the sake of success or artificial intelligence.

The biggest announcement at last year’s The Game Awards was Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, a new single-player RPG developed by former BioWare employees and legendary director Casey Hudson. Although we must wait a while before trying the game ourselves, Bloomberg revealed new details about how the game came to be and what we can expect from Hudson and his new team at Arcanaut Studios. The most significant announcement is undoubtedly the company financing Hudson’s new Star Wars project: Greater Than Group (GTG). GTG was founded by Simon Zhu, a former NetEase executive. The company was born out of Zhu’s experience collaborating with numerous NetEase partners before the company cut funding to several Western partners.

Zhu believes that NetEase went too far with the layoffs and that the gaming industry’s shift toward generative AI is excessive overall. In his view, it is possible to achieve player satisfaction, commercial success, and artistic excellence simultaneously. There’s no need to compromise or sacrifice one for the other. Let’s give the best creators the opportunity to work on their dream projects. That way, everyone wins.

Arcanaut Studios isn’t the only new studio receiving funding from GTG. Another example is Bullet Farm, a studio founded by David Vonderhaar, the former lead of Call of Duty: Black Ops. GTG’s portfolio also includes MAGship, a company led by Masato Sakai. Regarding new details on Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic, Hudson commented on the game’s development. For example, he mentioned that the studio will not use generative AI tools because he does not believe in their creative value. He believes AI lacks creativity. It’s hard to imagine where this could be useful in the development process. He isn’t impressed and said that he and Arcanaut’s leadership will strive to avoid having a development team of hundreds of people to keep costs low.

Hudson also revealed what kind of single-player RPG Star Wars: Fate of the Old Republic will be: it won’t be an incredibly long game. In his view, bigger isn’t necessarily better. If you’re excited about a game and it turns out to be 200 hours long (even if you don’t intend to finish it), you start to wonder if you’ll make it to the end of the first act after spending 20 hours on it. Many players just want to play and finish a game.

It will be interesting to see which direction GTG takes next, especially if the first phase of Zhu’s plan is as successful as expected. The challenge for creators like Hudson, Vonderhaar, and Sakai is to know what they’re doing and find a way to achieve success without compromising the quality of their work. According to the team, commercial success isn’t the only thing that matters. The goal is to prove that they can earn a fair and honest living while providing great entertainment.

Source: WCCFTech, Bloomberg