IO Interactive is a busy, busy developer. Having made its mark on the immersive sim genre with the sublime Hitman trilogy over the past eight years, it’s now looking ahead to two brand new titles: Online RPG Project Fantasy, and an adventure with super-spy James Bond in Project 007.
“It’s a very exciting project, very close to my heart,” says IO Interactive's chief development officer Veronique Lallier of Project Fantasy, while staying tight-lipped about the entire thing. Lallier joined IO Interactive in its Brighton-based office just earlier this year in January, the latest endeavour in an expansive career beginning all the way back in 1999 in Paris, when she would camp outside Ubisoft’s offices to secure an internship.
It’s fair to say Lallier has been all over the place since then, working for a French TV channel under MTV, then heading to Rockstar to help launch Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City, and San Andreas. She then worked at NCsoft, which you might know from Guild Wars and Aion, before helping Warner Bros. establish itself in the gaming space with huge franchises like Mortal Kombat.
There and back again
Project 007's mission director, Rodrigo Santoro, has experience working on The Division and Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora.
Now, though, 25 years after her career first began, Lallier finds herself at the forefront of IO Interactive, and in charge of developing three series simultaneously: Hitman, Project Fantasy, and Project 007. She describes IOI’s Brighton office as “pushing the walls” with 30 people crammed into just one floor, and big plans are underway to expand across multiple floors and hire up to 100 people over the next year or so.
IOI’s position of actively hiring dozens of developers is a stark contrast to the rest of the games industry. Over 10,000 developers have been laid off from the industry over the past year or so, including from world-renowned studios like Epic Games, Xbox, PlayStation, Bungie, and more, which is to say nothing of all the studios like Volition that have shut down entirely.
“It's such a good position to be in as well in the industry these days. It's been a tough couple of years for our industry. But we are in the position where we are actually proactively hiring and bringing more talent to work on our game,” Lallier says of IO Interactive’s drive, and as an entirely independent developer, at that.
Lallier lists four core pillars, which she believes has helped IOI prosper over a disastrous period for the industry. The first of which is community. “Really care about them, nurture the relationship, listen to them,” Lallier says, pointing to Hitman as a prime example of how IOI has listened to and reacted to its community over the better part of the last decade. Last year, for example, IO removed the ‘Alt+F4’ exploit from Hitman’s Freelancer mode, but then walked back the removal in a subsequent patch after listening to player feedback.
The second is “game first,” or simply engaging with your development team. “I think for me, when I see a dev team as the most successful is not when you shove on them, you know, an IP, it’s when you’re engaging with your dev team and say ‘Ok, what should we do guys?’” the chief development officer adds.
Crucially, Lallier says that this hasn’t been the case for Project 007, which is obviously an established IP. “It’s so close to our DNA that it just feels seamless,” Lallier says, pointing to IOI’s work on Hitman as having established a base to work with another secret agent: James Bond. “The team is so happy, it’s such an honor to be able to work on such an IP” Lallier adds.
Third on Lallier’s survival list is to keep games “lean,” which she admits isn’t rocket science. “Always look at what you can use, in terms of evolution, to help you better optimize your output,” the IOI lead says, adding that developers also have to be mindful of costs during the iteration phase, but that there are still ways of finding funding for games out there, even if it doesn’t always feel like there is.
Lastly is simply communicating with other developers at industry events, one of which just so happens to be going on in Brighton as we speak: Develop 2024. Lallier says it’s paramount that developers exchange information wherever possible, and that networking also leads to new hires for your game, which is something IOI’s Brighton office has done by recruiting talent from local developers like Hangar 13.
What's next?
On the topic of games, though, it might surprise some to learn that IOI isn’t done with Hitman by any means, despite currently focusing on Project Fantasy and carving out its own space in a huge franchise with Project 007. Irish MMA fighter Conor McGregor was just added to Hitman as an Elusive Target, and Lallier teases that IOI has “more surprises to come to the game” at some point later this year.
Lallier is a little more tight-lipped about Project Fantasy, though. “We're not in a position yet to share too much,” the IOI lead says, adding that Project Fantasy will be a very “vibrant game,” and not really about dark fantasy. “It’s definitely a passion project for us and for our studio,” Lallier says, also adding that its online component will let IOI work closely with its community and fans.
The chief development officer similarly can’t impart a lot of information about Project 007 right now. “The main thing I can say is I am extremely excited because this is an origin story. So it's not going to take the old James Bond that we saw in the movie and it's not going to be his lookalike,” Lallier explains, adding that it’s not going to be like GoldenEye, even though she really loves the old-school shooter.
“It's going to be a very cool, very awesome project. I'm super excited about it,” Lallier continues. “And I mean, if you look at what we've done in the past with Hitman, 007 feels organic. For us because we've done, you know, stories about agents doing things. So that makes complete sense. That just feels like, this is normal and natural, you know, it's part of our DNA to create an amazing story about action.”
IO Interactive’s immediate future is threefold then, spread across the three aforementioned games. Lallier admits that it’s “very difficult” to be in the position of making three games simultaneously, even if it does seem “super cool.” It’s still an exciting prospect, though, one that Lallier believes will be good for IO Interactive in the long run. We’ll just have to keep waiting to hear more about all three games, but what’s clear is that IO is as busy as ever.
Take a look over our new games 2024 guide for a look at all the other new titles on the horizon.
