by Dan Moren
Inside Square Enix’s mobile games studio
Speaking of Deus Ex Go, Andrew Webster at The Verge visited the team responsible for it and the rest of the company’s “Go” mobile apps:
While many people left, preferring instead to take new jobs working on blockbusters, others, like Routon, saw the news as a challenge. Those who remained split into small teams and spent two weeks prototyping ideas that they would then pitch to higher-ups. There were only two restrictions on those ideas: they had to be mobile, and they had to be Hitman. Routon, a programmer by trade, partnered with designer Daniel Lutz who had a wild idea to turn the stealth assassination series into a turn-based board game. The pair spent those two weeks tinkering with yarn, paper, and plastic pieces from existing board games, before settling on the earliest version of what would become the surprise 2014 hit Hitman Go.
It’s an interesting read, especially the part that focuses on the culture clash between the team responsible for the Go games and those working on other mobile apps based on the same IP.