In recent years, Amazon Games has become known for MMOs like Lost Ark, Throne & Liberty, and Blue Protocol — massively multiplayer games from predominantly Asian publishers built around grinding. But even with several new releases on the horizon, including a Lord of the Rings MMO, there are signs that Amazon Games is ready to move on from one of the genres that has defined it.
In an exclusive interview with IGN, Amazon Games boss Christoph Hartmann talked about the label’s plans in the wake of revealing King of Meat, a new hack-and-slash co-op game that Hartmann calls Amazon’s “first step out of the MMO genre” as it seeks to expand its publishing portfolio.
“As you know, we have Tomb Raider and others, so that’s obviously happening regardless,” Hartmann says. “But I think what’s even more important is that we are taking bets on new ideas and new developers, which is very few… Well, we are not yet established publisher, but we’re still a big company.”
While Amazon Games has been mostly quiet through 2024, Hartmann says that the publisher has been busy behind the scenes, calling it one of its most important years to date. Amazon Games currently has 10 games in development, he says, and are currently negotiating “a couple more.” These include blue chip games like Tomb Raider and the Lord of the Rings MMO, as well as a new driving game from the former developers behind Forza Horizon.
Still, questions remain. Despite saying as recently as June that a reveal for Lord of the Rings MMO is “not too far away,” Amazon Games CEO Christoph Hartmann says that it’s still early days for the anticipated online game based on the blockbuster fantasy franchise.
“We’re still trying to find the hook, find that idea of what it is because we don’t just want to go and do the same thing over,” Hartmann tells IGN in an exclusive interview. “While it’s tempting sometimes with an existing IP, that’s not the point of doing it. You’ve got to find a fresh twist, and we’re still, I think, in that period where we really want to find out what could be the hook, what could be the thing which is different to all the other games out there. So it’s a little bit early.”
There are also plenty of questions around Tomb Raider, which has been caught up in the mire around the Embracer Group. Hartmann mostly waves them off, saying that developer Crystal Dynamics is “fairly sheltered from everything going on with Embracer.”
“People obviously look at what the parent company is doing, but it never impacted on resources, never led to any changes on management for them, so they’re fine. I mean, doing a new Tomb Raider, the bar is so high. The longer you go, the expectation goes higher, so it’s a huge, huge task, but things are progressing. I mean, there’s some really great ideas here,” Hartmann says. “Obviously, we’re not going to share any with you even if we would love to, but things are going well, things are moving forward. And from what I could tell, Crystal was pretty sheltered, because also when you look before…they went through a couple of ownership changes anyway before, it’s not brand new for them.”
Hartmann goes on to talk about the state of the games industry, Amazon Games’ stance on the Switch 2, the label’s outlook on AI, and more. Read on for the full interview.
King of Meat, quite the name. What does it say about Amazon’s portfolio and strategy going forward?
Christoph Hartmann, CEO of Amazon Games: What it says about Amazon’s game strategy going forward? It’s a couple of things. First, we’re moving out of being a MMO-only publisher…King of Meat is the first step out of the MMO genre. As you know, we have Tomb Raider and others, so that’s obviously happening regardless. But I think what’s even more important is that we are taking bets on new ideas and new developers. Well, we are not yet established publisher, but we’re still a big company.
Very few people sign up third-party deals. We just have shown it that we heavily invested Europe and we’ve signed up with [Maverick Games], great talented team, and same with King of Meat. It’s someone who maybe would’ve been able without our help to take it that level, which is financially, as well as resources, technology, service structure, also creative and so on because we have some super experienced people.
And it’s just us taking risks to do something new in the industry and I think people will see more of that. I think it’s important for the industry, it’s fun for us to do and hopefully pays off, but that’s what it really is… Going early into a stock and maybe one day have the next Tesla. Very few times it happens, but it happens.
Amazon Games have had a number of projects enjoy very strong short-term success. New World comes to mind, Lost Ark, but none have really managed to truly break out and establish themselves longterm. Why do you think that is and what steps are Amazon taking to kind of ensure that happens? Or is that a goal?
Hartmann: Obviously, it’s a goal. Everyone wants to have his evergreen franchise which goes on for 10 years, but when you and me do this for a long time now, we really run through the list of either publishers or developers. Most of the people, it took a while to get there. It doesn’t happen on the first game… I was there but it was almost before my time because I was here less than nine months, and that’s what makes Amazon great. Eventually we want to have a couple of evergreen franchises where we really can play to the strengths of Amazon, but we just keep on going.
With New World and Lost Ark, we had some promising success. Those things are hard to maintain because people invest a lot of time and try out new things, but then they quickly rotate back to their evergreen franchise they have have been playing, so we’re just going to keep on going. But yes, obviously we want to have one of those big franchises, that’s the whole point. Anything smaller than that would not be interesting to Amazon; we are a larger than life company. We’re not in here to try it out and do some cute game development.
As you look to expand your portfolio beyond just MMOs and you’re placing a lot of calculated bets, are there any particular game types or genres that are really standing out to you as having particularly high upside?
Hartmann: Any genre has an upside if you nail it. I mean, look at Fortnite or League — it’s the game quality and cycle. It’s the game quality and cycles being at the right time at the right place. It’s not plannable, but I think if you work really hard, keep on going, eventually it will happen. Sure, we can go through a chart now, I can tell you what market size sports has and action adventure has in this net. And obviously, yes, we are interested in the big trials, but I’ve done this long enough to also not just say, “Oh, sports is the biggest genre, then let’s do a sports game because…” No, you need a license more than any other people. You need a license and a great developer.
By the way, knowing from my time at 2K, you know took how long it took for NBA 2K to get big, that game was around forever. And we were always behind EA… At one moment in time, everything went right and we made it big. So, I don’t want to be stuck with a genre because the biggest opportunity is almost when you come with a new genre. I mean, look at battle royale. Do you call it a genre? I don’t know, is it a genre, is it like a shooter? I don’t know what you would call it, but that’s kind of the best case which can happen. You have a breakthrough which hits the zeitgeist.
Looking at some of the other games that are currently in your portfolio, can you provide an update on how work on Lord of the Rings is going at the moment?
Hartmann: It’s still early. It’s a big IP, it’s a big game. I know you’re going to fish now probably every little word and try to read into it, but honestly, it’s too early to read into every little word. We’re still trying to find the hook, find that idea of what it is because we don’t just want to go and do the same thing over. While it’s tempting sometimes with an existing IP, that’s not the point of doing it. You’ve got to find a fresh twist, and we’re still, I think, in that period where we really want to find out what could be the hook, what could be the thing which is different to all the other games out there. So it’s a little bit early
Can you maybe give an update on the status of Tomb Raider at Crystal Dynamics given the recent turmoil at Embracer Group?
Hartmann: The studio, from what I can tell, is fairly sheltered from everything going on with Embracer. I mean, it has to because Embracer never was one company. It was just an accumulation of an incredibly large amount of independent businesses; and it’s not just games development, they’re like books and games and this and that. And they always were very sheltered. People obviously look at what the parent company is doing, but it never impacted on resources, never led to any changes on management for them, so they’re fine.
I mean, doing a new Tomb Raider, the bar is so high. The longer you go, the expectation goes higher, so it’s a huge, huge task, but things are progressing. I mean, there’s some really great ideas here. Obviously, we’re not going to share any with you even if we would love to, but things are going well, things are moving forward. And from what I could tell, Crystal was pretty sheltered..the studio went through a couple of ownership changes anyway before, it’s not brand-new for them. They kind of were doing games with moving around anyway. And like, okay, new sheriff… you know what I mean, new owner in town. Let’s just keep on doing what we do and make games.
I would love to hear as an executive in the games industry in charge of one of the biggest publishing labels. I would love to hear some of your current insights into the games industry right now as it stands.
Hartmann: I think in the games industry we have to reinvent ourselves because we are competing not just against each other. I don’t even think we compete in the metric, and we competing really with all the other things like TikTok, streaming services… you can keep yourself busy forever and without having to touch a game. And we have to overcome our fear of trying out new things, otherwise we’re going to get boring. We can just not keep on doing the same game over and over. While I know the problem also is you have to, because the financial investment is so big nowadays, and the investment into games and games development became so much, much more expensive in relation to the growth of the overall market. The portion of money going to development, it’s so high. Obviously, you take a huge risk, so everyone plays it safe.
So, my hope is that AI will help. It’s not going to solve it all, but will be one thing where we, for example, can shorten the life cycle. I think games development takes way too long, like five years per game. It’s us predicting — especially in a fast-moving world — what the zeitgeist is going to be in five years. It just means basically, everything will be lucky shots and hopefully AI will help us to streamline processes so hand-done work will go fast. Ideally we can get it down to three years so we can iterate more, which then will bring the budgets down a little bit. I don’t think they’re really going to get cheaper, but at least you fail faster and then you can go on and go on until you find the right thing.
And I think we as a games industry need it, and AI is hopefully going to also help us to come up. I mean, we didn’t really have that many new games and genres. On the other hand, we’d also be coming and doing this since 1996, we are an established industry. In 1996, you looked out of the window and said, “Let’s do a skateboarding game.” It was that simple… Movies or music who have been through it much, much longer than us, they have a hard time coming up with something new…But I think eventually, we as an industry definitely have to innovate on many levels to develop faster and also be willing to take more risks.
It’s interesting because the SAG-AFTRA voice actors were explicitly calling a strike in part because they were seeking AI protections, and you were just talking about how AI is a way to streamline processes. Have you been monitoring that strike? Do you have thoughts on it?
Hartmann: Yeah, we have. I mean, I got to be careful what is here because we are a big company and have to deal with all those organizations, so I don’t really want to get in the middle of it. But when we talk about AI, first of all, hopefully it will help us to have new gameplay ideas, which has nothing to do with taking work away from anyone. And especially for games, we don’t really have acting… The majority of the team sits in programming and that’s not going to go away because that’s all about innovation. If it takes something, it will be really the boring parts. I think what could be super helpful is localization. Right now, we’re localizing our game into a certain set of languages. Basically, does it commercially make sense to have it in a language, yes or no? Having AI actually will help us.
That’s why I’m thinking it’s not going to make it cheap, it’s just going to make us translate our games into more languages. Which is great for gamers, because there’s countries which maybe not everyone speaks perfect English and they would love to have in a local language, but they’re half the size. And I think those are where AI will help us. I don’t think it’s something where I think actually will create more likely jobs than it will take jobs away. Technology always, always has done that.
And by the way, I don’t believe any technology can replace human creativity and the uniqueness… There’s always something special. Humans will be always, when it comes to that, they will be always one step ahead. The machine might get very close. I don’t know what you think, but I don’t think it will be able to translate those unique things into fresh ideas. If you find AI designing games, the game’s going to be all the same.
Since you’re looking to expand your portfolio, I’m just wondering, what do you think is the state of MMOs right now?
Hartmann: So, MMOs. I ask, I wouldn’t say every day, but weekly that question. I mean MMO, it’s a tough genre and the good thing is it has a very dedicated audience. There’s lots of MMO players out there. They play a lot of hours of games, they’re very dedicated players. It’s a great, great community. But what I said before, development costs are hard and it’s actually not so much the development of the game, it’s actually maintaining them. There’s things like server costs, coming up with content, a lot of expectations that content is for free because the cat is out of the hat or bag. I’m not sure what you say in English, one or the other, but you get my point.
It’s not anymore that you sell a game and then charge a certain amount of dollars every month, so that means that money has to come from somewhere. It’s not even about someone making huge profits. It’s almost the same you have for other games or the industry by itself. It will make it harder and harder to sustainable for smaller companies to do that, because either upfront, a lot of money with a lot of risk. Or as MMOs, you know how it goes up and down and up and down, and they almost go pull one year of the market and then come back again. You got to have the financial backing to actually survive that.
It will be one of the genres obviously that will be around forever, it’s one of the foundations of gaming. But it’s a very tough business in the long run, especially I think for smaller developers to innovate because the cost of maintaining the game is just very, very high. Because as I said, technology, servers, creating content and also the consumer… The expectation from gamers that many of the things should come for free and forgetting that someone has to build that.
Are you monitoring the situation around the next generation Switch, especially given reports that it’s probably not going to be out this fiscal year?
Hartmann: Yeah, we obviously plan to develop games for it and I can’t wait for it to be out. I mean, honestly, I’d rather have them wait a year and get it perfect than rush it to the market and then we all complain about what doesn’t work. Switch has been such a fantastic product, I can wait another year if I have to. And from development, I think most non-Nintendo developers are not exclusively doing titles for the Switch. They’re always part of a portfolio mix of platform mix. Just wait.
And last question, just how has 2024 been going for Amazon games in particular and games in general, do you feel?
Hartmann: I think while it’s very not visible to external as much, but I think it was almost the most important year in our… history sounds so dramatic. At the end of our last couple of years sounds better. We have signed quite a few titles. Some of our biggest titles have done major progress, we’re also shipping for the first time a console. Yes, everyone ships, so it’s not that big of an achievement. On the other hand, putting a huge, huge MMO on a console actually is not as easy as people might think. It’s definitely more to deal with than your 22-hour action-adventure single-player game, I can tell you.
It has been really, for us, I feel, a year where things are coming together. We have now 10 titles in development, we’re negotiating a couple more, and there’s a lot of energy going around. Whoever I talk to within our studios or in organization, they’re very energized and pumped-up because I think it feels like it’s really going to happen. Yes, one title’s going to work, the other’s not going to work, but we’re just going to keep on going and having an exciting lineup, a great mix of the Tomb Raiders, the Lord of the Rings, the kind of blue chips which still have a high bar to it so they’re not home runs and doing more adventurous titles like King of Meat, giving younger studios a chance with AAA support, something we have right now.
I think it’s very exciting to all of us and so far, I’m very pleased with 2024, and if Throne and Liberty and New World do really great, I might be even happier.
Kat Bailey is IGN’s News Director as well as co-host of Nintendo Voice Chat. Have a tip? Send her a DM at @the_katbot.
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