"I just dropped them an email" – How a small studio won over Netflix to make a Queen's Gambit game
At Develop Brighton last week, Jamie Brayshaw, Ripstone's head of partnerships, gave a talk on how the studio convinced Netflix to let them develop a Queen's Gambit title – the developer's first mobile project, and the first Netflix game using Unreal Engine.
While the Liverpool-based developer had experience making chess games (it is behind 2017's Chess Ultra), The Queen's Gambit's existence is the result of a bullish strategy from the studio. Brayshaw took the audience through that journey, from an extremely short pitching deadline to the challenges of making a mobile game in Unreal.
"Before we made The Queen's Gambit, we had a lot of experience making games using Unreal," Brayshaw explained. "And we made mobile games in the past, mainly using proprietary tech, custom engines. But this was our first game using Unreal for mobile."
Brayshaw went through the highs and lows of the development journey, Ripstone's partnership with Netflix, and demonstrated how being bold at the pitching stage – even if you're a small studio – can pay off.
You may remember that at some point in the whirlwind that was 2020, people got really into playing games, whether digital or analog, including chess. Brayshaw noted this was a good time for Rockwater, the Ripstone studio that made Chess Ultra for PC and console, as a lot of players picked up the game.
Fast forward to October 2020, and Netflix released its adaptation of The Queen's Gambit, a miniseries following the rise of (fictional) chess prodigy Beth Harmon during the Cold War era.
"It sparked a moment in popular culture," Brayshaw recalled, with 62 million people watching The Queen's Gambit within a month. "It put chess front and centre of people's imagination. Popularity went wild, chess sets sold out around the world.
"Loads of people picked up Chess Ultra, and we wondered how we could make the most of this moment to connect with the fans. How can we bring The Queen's Gambit and our games together?"
Rockwater did not waste time, and
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