Why Bossa sold its past to pursue a future in co-op PvE

gamesindustry.biz:

Last year, Bossa Studios sold a catalog of its internally created IP to TinyBuild, including Surgeon Simulator, I am Bread, and I am Fish, saying at the time that it would be focused on co-op PvE games going forward.

GamesIndustry.biz caught up with Bossa CEO Henrique Olifiers at the Game Developers Conference last month to get a more detailed explanation of how the change in strategy came about.

Olifiers says the studio decided to pivot about two years ago, inspired in part by the way it had been making games previously. To that point, all of Bossa's titles had arisen from open-ended internal game jams, and while that unfettered creativity allowed for a diverse array of titles, that diversity had some drawbacks.

"When I am producing I am Bread, there's nothing I can take from Surgeon Simulator in terms of technology, learnings, and so on," Olifiers says. "When I go from I am Bread to the next game, it's all new from scratch as well. So we took the decision to find a niche, to find a vertical and focus on that. We're going to be the best in the world on that as we keep releasing new games, reusing our technology, reusing our learnings, and getting better in that specific area."

So why choose co-op PvE games as the specific area to go after? Olifiers says it was a combination of the team's capabilities and strengths, with market considerations also playing a role.

If one looks at the PvP or battle royale markets, Olifiers notes that "production values are super high."

"Teams are very large. You have a lot of pressure on design in terms of things that PvP bring to the table [such as] balance, exploitation of mechanics, hacking, and things like that.

"If you move into the PvE arena, we see a lot of opportunities to do