mikael-nermark
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Starbreeze's 'P13' headed to XBLA, PSN, and PC
Compared to other Swedish game development powerhouses – DICE, Avalanche, Massive – Syndicate developer Starbreeze keeps a lower profile. Having only released two projects in the last five years, Starbreeze isn't offering many consistent reminders that it still exists. Company president and CEO Mikael Nermark is aiming to change that, and his first two major projects are two games you probably haven't heard of: P13 and Cold Mercury."We're trying to build four independent core teams," Nermark told me in a phone interview earlier today. Beyond the existing teams at Starbreeze, the newly acquired Overkill Software wil serve as one of those four teams. So, four "core teams," four projects. We know Overkill is working on a sequel to last year's Payday: The Heist, and we know that two other teams are working on P13 and Cold Mercury (respectively), but that fourth team is a mystery.Nermark wouldn't budge on new details about Cold Mercury, but he told me that P13 is currently "in the middle of production" and "it's going really well." The game is heading to Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and PC. Starbreeze brought in an outside force to take creative lead on the project: Swedish director Josef Fares."He's one of the most or maybe the most famous movie directors in Sweden of all time. He's never done a game before, but he's an avid gamer and he loves games. So he actually left the movie industry and this guy is like having one of the top guys – this is the top guy in Sweden making movies. So he's actually working for us full-time," Nermark said. "To Swedes, this is like having a guy like Christopher Nolan working on the game on a daily basis."
Starbreeze CEO doesn't think Syndicate 'could've ever lived up to some people's expectations'
CEO and President of Starbreeze Studios Mikael Nermark appears to have mixed feelings about Syndicate, the FPS reboot his team launched earlier this year. Syndicate snagged the No. 2 spot during its launch week with sales of 34,000, just 2,000 shy of Asura's Wrath. Even after such a squeeze, Nermark tells Joystiq he isn't disappointed in Syndicate, numerically or otherwise:"Sales? What can I say?" Nermark says, inadvertently answering his own rhetorical question. "So many things depend on whether sales are good or not good. And it can always be better, right? You always want it to be better."Being "not disappointed" isn't the same as being overwhelmingly, truly happy with a title, nor is it the same as being devastated – it seems Nermark is still working out how exactly he feels about Syndicate, but he's made up his mind about Starbreeze itself."Personally, I've never been satisfied with any games I've worked on. I never play my own games," Nermark says. "I was brought into Starbreeze two and a half years ago, and the first year I worked on other things than on production. But what I saw coming out of this long production time, I'm proud of what we did at Starbreeze."
Starbreeze says EA's 'Project RedLime' is 'biggest project' it's ever worked on
Though we don't know exactly what "Project RedLime" is (signs point to a long-rumored Syndicate remake) we do know that it's "the biggest project the studio has ever worked on." Of course, that studio is Sweden's Starbreeze and that quote is from its new CEO, Mikael Nermark. In order to get a sense of how large that scale is, you'd need to compare it to the studio's other games, including the surprisingly good movie tie-in Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, its remake Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena, and the now-being-sequeled comic book adaptation The Darkness. Not included in this list: The studio's other EA project, a canceled Jason Bourne game. You may have spotted a trend in Starbreeze's curriculum vitae: an abundance of licensed games. No bother, says Nermark. "Whatever the project is, if it's an original IP or license, the most important thing is that you believe in the game and have fun developing it," he told CVG. In related news, Starbreeze believes in Project RedLime and is having fun developing it.
