Realtime Worlds CEO David Jones recently expressed his disappointment with Microsoft over their decision to go with Ruffian Games to develop Crackdown 2. "I think it was unfortunate that it had to be with a start-up in Dundee," said Jones at the time.
Many were curious what the people working at Ruffian thought of all this and Edge caught up with the studio's creative director Billy Thomson, producer Jim Cope, and executive producer Peter Connelly to ask them what they thought.
"The bottom line is that, at the end of Crackdown, we were in negotiations to get Crackdown 2 moving," said Connelly. "But logistically the business stars wouldn’t align, and we respected Realtime Worlds’ decision to move on to APB. They’re a strong team, a great company, and still a great partner. But we’re super fortunate to have found Ruffian, who are the right people to take the franchise forward and build its next great game. We’ve absolutely no animosity towards [Realtime Worlds]."
When asked if some of the hurt feelings come from the greater emphasis Microsoft is paying to the sequel compared to the original, Thompson answered. "That’s a tricky one to answer because, if you think about the first game, a lot of people say that Crackdown was a sleeper hit. I think that’s quite fair. But I wouldn’t say it’s fair to say we’re being better treated by Microsoft this time round – Microsoft backed us all the way on the first game, it just had bigger franchises to put its marketing weight behind."
"Close to half of our team worked on the original game," continued Thompson. "We’ve got core members from every discipline who worked on it, the majority of the design team, and, depending on whom you speak to, some of the best coders and most talented artists. But there are still guys at Realtime we want to be friends with, so we don’t want to get dragged into a slanging match."
"We still maintain a really strong working relationship with Realtime; they’re our neighbors in both personal and professional relationships, and we like that," added Cope. "But leaping to our defense, in a sense, we firmly believe we’re the right people to make Crackdown 2."
