Massive Entertainment Managing Director David Polfeldt called The Division 2 a “monster game” in a recent interview. The “monster game,” according to Polfeldt, requires a huge team to develop, and is designed to cater to all kinds of people.
In an interview published in Edge magazine (issue 330, via Wccftech), Polfeldt described how Massive Entertainment handles a game like The Division 2.
“If you look at the learnings we made from The Division, we know that people play the game in quite different ways,” he said. “And people fall in love with different aspects of the game. The Division is expected to cater to quite a lot of tastes, which is never an easy thing. How do you create a game that caters to all that? The answer is that you have to create a monster game.
But Polfeldt said he thinks that may not be as simple as you think.
“I think this is a challenge for some other games that are in the same genre: you’re expected to deliver on a lot of different tastes and preferences,” he stated. “It’s really fun to do, but it’s not easy. And yet you also have to remember that Massive is a studio that is 20 years old, and we don’t want the easiest challenge. We want to win the Champions League. And yes, that’s really difficult, but that’s why it’s exciting to us.”
Massive Entertainment has grown to around 700 employees, nearly doubling its headcount since The Division released. Massive announced The Division 2 in March 2018. The Ubisoft-owned developer is also working on an adaptation of James Cameron’s Avatar series. That game is expected to use a similar games as a service model. Polfeldt said the challenge for that project will be to translate a two-hour movie into many hundreds of hours experience.
Our own interview with the game’s lead gameplay designer didn’t talk about a monster game, per se, but he did talk about the game’s lack of politics. That goes hand in hand with trying to appeal to everyone since making a definitive statement has a chance to anger one side.
The Division 2 launches on March 15 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One. The third-person looter shooter is set in Washington, D.C. Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment released a roadmap for the game’s first year yesterday.
