Bad Brain Game Studios Q&A – Building an Open World Spielberg ft. King Coming of Age Story

wccftech.com:

In late May, NetEase announced the foundation of a new game development called Bad Brain Game Studios. Headquartered in Canada, Bad Brain is led by former Ubisoft veteran Sean Crooks, who worked as a producer on games like Driver: San Francisco, The Mighty Quest for Epic Loot, Watch_Dogs 2, and Watch Dogs: Legion.

The studio aims to create triple-A games, starting with an open world action/adventure game with horror elements and a coming-of-age story inspired by movies from the 1980s.

I recently had the pleasure of talking with Sean Crooks about everything related to Bad Brain, from meeting with NetEase executives to building the studio's culture and establishing a work model to the overarching vision for the upcoming game, which will be built in Unreal Engine 5.

Did you immediately hit it off with NetEase, or did you seek other investors earlier? Can you talk about the process of setting up Bad Brain?

It's a great question. The biggest thing that made me hit it off with NetEase was they mentioned one great thing. Simon (Zhu, president of global investments and partnerships at NetEase) specifically mentioned the level of support they could give me to work on the games I wanted to build. He didn't list out trends or anything like that. He just said, 'What game do you guys want to build?' Everything else doesn't matter. Like, what would you like to do?

That was a refreshing question, especially in the AAA market driven by investors piggybacking on the latest trends. It's not how we started the conversation and that immediately struck me as different. We explored that further, and then I started to realise that not only is that a very great question to be asked, but also that the level of support they would provide if we