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Splinter Cell Blacklist game director now at Warner Bros. Montreal
Splinter Cell Blacklist game director Patrick Redding left Ubisoft recently to join Batman: Arkham Origins studio Warner Bros. Montreal, where he's working as a creative director on an unannounced project. An Ubisoft veteran of nearly ten years, Redding's previous role was as a creative director at Ubisoft Toronto, again on an unannounced project. According to his LinkedIn profile, Redding's switch to WB Montreal occurred sometime last month, but the news was confirmed yesterday by Arkham Origins creative director Eric Holmes. With Rocksteady revealed as the developer behind the recently unveiled Batman: Arkham Knight, whatever WB Montreal's working on is currently remaining cloaked. [Image: Ubisoft]
WB Montreal focusing on great DC Comics games, 'forget the movies'
The most successful games based on DC Comics properties, like, say, the two recent Batman games, aren't based on movies. Unsurprisingly, then, Warner Bros. sees no particular reason to cross-promote with DC games. Warner Bros. Montreal executive producer Reid Schneider told Canadian Business that WB isn't pushing the studio to tie into movies. "No, we're not going in that direction," Schneider said. "It's really about make the game what it needs to be and forget the movies." In fact, it's avoiding movie deadlines, he said, that helps the games become great. "If you look at the similarities between [Batman: Arkham Asylum and Neversoft's 1998 Spider-Man game], they weren't based on movies per se," Schneider said. "They were just taking that really rich fiction from the comic books and exploring the characters. It's not about hitting the movie date or some arbitrary date-it was giving the game the time it needs to be successful and really just concentrating on the quality of it." It's been successful enough that the games are getting their own tie-ins.
