One of the bigger surprises in Microsoft’s E3 press conference wasn’t about a new game, but a new game studio. Or, to be specific, a new life for an old game studio. Ninja Theory — the storied developer behind everything from the ambitious Enslaved: Odyssey to the West to the controversial DmC: Devil May Cry to the critically acclaimed indie release, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice — is now an internal Microsoft game studio, alongside names like Minecraft’s Mojang and Sea of Thieves’ Rare.
The studio’s founder and chief creative director, Tameem Antoniades, shared some background on the decision to leave independent life behind and become a first-party studio in a video posted to the team’s YouTube account. Instead of coming off as defensive or the kind of PR-directed mea culpa you may expect, Antoniades — along with commercial director, Dominic Matthews — offer a passionate explanation for why a studio like theirs may be interested, or even desire, a corporate patron to facilitate their projects.
And regardless of what game, or games, result from this acquisition, it’s heartening to know that Ninja Theory will be invested entirely in producing that, across all of the team, instead of more work-for-hire. You can watch the entire video above or read Antoniades thoughts below:
About four years ago, we very nearly disappeared as a company. Dozens, if not hundreds of developers like us were closing shop all around us. And we were told there was no future for developers like us: too big to be indie, too small to be truly AAA. We had to tell our team we were facing annihilation, and so we had to find another way.
We split our team of 100 people into several smaller teams which worked mostly on work-for-hire projects. These projects helped to fund our own original game, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. Our goal was to find a space between indie and AAA and to reclaim our creative independence. It took three years, a team of 20 people, and a budget of $10 million including marketing, but we did it.
With your support, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice sold way beyond our expectations. And that success even gave us the opportunity to give over $100,000 to charity. The game has won dozens of awards, including three Game Awards and an incredible five BAFTAs. And our small act of creative rebellion is inspiring other developers to do the same, to find a middle ground, where high-end, creatively risky games can be successful once again. If we played our cards right, we believed we could get all of our teams to be creatively independent, like the Hellblade team, and we thought that it would probably take five to eight years.
Antoniades said the call from Microsoft was unexpected and Ninja Theory wasn’t even looking for an acquisition, but as part of the discussion he articulated the studio’s goals thusly:
We want to be free from the AAA machine and make games focused on the experience, not around monetization. We want to take bigger creative risks and create genre-defining games without the constant threat of annihilation. We want to make our own games our own way, and not be told what to make and how to make it. And above all, we want to protect our team, our culture and our identity. Because above all, that is Ninja Theory. In short, we asked for full creative independence and I remember thinking at the time that this is going to the end of that conversation.
Instead, it resulted in making the decision to join Microsoft as an internal studio. Lastly, Antoniades said:
I’m now convinced that this is an opportunity for us to jump years ahead, to aim higher than we’ve ever dared to, to really fly, without the threat of falling down that’s held us back so much in the past.
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