Crackdown developer Realtime Worlds has openly indicated that they were not amused when Crackdown 2 development duties were handed to Ruffian, though the apparent animosity is not shared at the other Dundee studio. Today, Microsoft Game Studios’ Phil Spencer gave his half of the story to Develop as to why Ruffian was tapped to make the anticipated sequel.
“When Billy Thomson, the lead designer of the game, left Realtime Worlds there was an opportunity,” said Spencer. “But at the same time, I consider Dave Jones [CEO of Realtime Worlds and creative director of the first Crackdown] a good friend, and think APB is brilliant – and I didn’t want to undermine that studio. That meant that when Billy and Gary [Liddon, Ruffian co-founder] formed Ruffian, my first call was ‘Guys, I’m not going to sign this game right now. You need to establish yourself as a studio and I don’t want to be the cause of pain at Realtime Worlds.' Now, there will always be a bit of tension in that kind of situation, but I’ve since spoken to Dave and Ruffian have turned themselves into a fully-staffed self-sustained studio. And they have the same design and technical people that worked on Crackdown – with that team in place it meant the time was right for Crackdown 2.”
Spencer claimed that Microsoft did have an internal debate over what developer should handle the Crackdown sequel. “We own the Crackdown IP and we could have just found another developer out there and done something called Crackdown 2 but as you and others know, it’s one of my favorite games of all time; so I personally wanted it to be special if we went ahead with a sequel. If there was anyone that was a stickler about commissioning a new one, it was me. I didn’t want to just turn the crank," said Spenser. “It would have been easy to chase the money but, again, I wanted to make sure that anything we work on is correctly nurtured. We had to find the right team who really understood what game it is – and that was Billy and the team at Ruffian.”
