How Space Marine 2 stays true to its Warhammer 40K fanbase | Tim Willits interview

Tim Willits He spent decades at id Software, making games like Doom, Quake, and more. Now he’s chief creative officer Saber InteractiveA major game developer and publisher acquired by Inclusive Group and went into business on its own again after Embracer ran into financial trouble.

However, Saber did showcase the following games at the massive Gamescom trade show in Cologne, Germany: Space Marine 2It is based on the Warhammer 40K series that has been around since 1987. After a very long hiatus, Saber’s Dmitry Grigorenko and others came up with the idea of ​​making Space Marine 2 as a sequel to Space Marine, a shooter video game that was released in 2011. Games Workshop, the owner of the series, gave the go-ahead. Now, finally, Space Marine 2 is being released into early access today.

The parties signed a deal after Willits joined in 2019 and then began work in 2020. But then the pandemic intervened.

I met with Willits at Gamescom, and he talked about Saber’s newfound independence. He’s working on Space Marine 2, Jurassic Park, A Quiet Place, and Toxic Commander. We talked about what it’s like for Willits to step away from the mode he was in at id Software and start something new. And we talked about how the games industry can bounce back after several years of layoffs.

Here is the edited text of our interview.

Disclosure: Devcom paid for my travel to Cologne, where I moderated two sessions at the event.

GamesBeat: I had this idea once that the Warhammer 40K series inspired the Gears of War video game, which inspired the Space Marines video game, just like the Raiders of the Lost Ark video games inspired Tomb Raider and Uncharted, which inspired Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. That kind of Comparison got me into trouble years ago to tell who is copying whom.

Tim Willits: There’s this crazy cycle of influence. The Warhammer series has inspired so many video games for decades. If you’re young or don’t understand it, you won’t understand it, but I really hope people understand how big of an influence it is.

The Warhammer fanbase is in the millions and they are very passionate. They work with Games Workshop to make sure everything is right. We had to change the armour proportions around the ankles because it wasn’t right. Every symbol, every term. The features of the Tyranids and Chaos marines, everything has to be justified in tradition. Games Workshop is great to work with but they understand that the fanbase won’t settle for something that isn’t right.

GamesBeat: What was it like to join a company that makes this game?

Willits: It was great. They said, “We played Doom 2016, the glory kills were great! Let’s do more.” But we talked about the original Space Marine at id. It shows that everything is connected. There was an episode of South Park once where they said, “The Simpsons already did it.” But I’m excited and lucky to be working on such a great game.

There’s one important thing I want to say. Space Marine 2. Space Marine was a great game but it’s hard to play now. It’s only on PC. There’s going to be millions of people who’ve never played it before. I don’t want them to be scared or feel like it’s a requirement. We have a clear story in Space Marine 2, a solid place to start. You don’t need to know anything about Titus or what came before. We’ll be releasing videos that Clive Standen helped us create soon. He’s the guy who plays Titus. That’ll help people understand what the Warhammer universe is. Where is this place? Who is the Emperor? What happened to Horus? What’s the war about? We’ll have some videos that will help. But really, we’ll be introducing everything.

GamesBeat: Why is this news coming so long after the first game?

Willits: The guys at Saber – Dmitry Grigorenko, our game director, the guy who created World War Z. He’s a great guy. He had a huge passion for the project. He and Oliver, our creative director who’s been in some of the interviews, went to Games Workshop. They said, “We’d love to do a Space Marine game.” Games Workshop was very impressed with the knowledge, passion, and understanding of the universe – it’s a tough, thick universe. They were very impressed that these guys knew what they were talking about. They said, “Let’s do it.” Focus has been a great partner for us. We’ve made a great game.

GamesBeat: How long has this been in the works?

Willits: Since 2020. When I came to Sabre in 2019, we signed the deal, but then the pandemic happened.

GamesBeat: Was that one of the reasons you wanted to make this change?

Willits: What I love about my position at Saber is that I get to work on so many games. I loved working at id. We’ve done some great things. But right now I’m working on Space Marine, Jurassic Park. We have Toxic Commando, which we’ll talk more about soon. We’re releasing A Quiet Place next month, which is a lot of fun. I did Evil Dead. We have sports games. It’s a dream come true to work on so many games across so many genres with these talented teams.

We have some really cool stuff that we haven’t announced yet. We announced two games this week: The Knightling, just an indie game, small team. At the Xbox booth. And then RoadCraft. Everybody’s here to see Space Marine too.

GamesBeat: Is there a way to do things differently, both by learning from id and learning from a different company?

Willits: Oh, absolutely. Having been in the industry since 1995, that experience. You know. You do your job forever. You just learn. I can see a problem in a game from miles away. It’s something I tell teams. “I’ve seen this a thousand times. This is going to be a problem.” They say, “No, it’s not. We’ll do it right.” And then it turns out it didn’t work. But to be able to have that experience and now to be able to have that experience in other genres—simulation games. You know me. I’ve never played a simulation game. Now I understand how SnowRunner is played. It’s a completely different way of thinking.

GamesBeat: It’s always interesting to step outside of a mode you’re in.

Willits: It’s hard. Especially the production and business side of things. We work on a lot of games at Sabre. We have studios all over the world. It’s definitely a different way of thinking to be able to understand the scope of a project, how much it actually costs, and make smart decisions that will make these games profitable.

As games get more and more expensive, you’ll see traditional North American developers struggle. A lot of these big companies are working on one project at a time. We don’t have teams working on one game at a time. Really understanding what scope means. If you work on a game for four months and for some reason you decide to change direction, sometimes you’re spending millions of dollars. We made SnowRunner for not a lot of money and it paid off ridiculously. We focused on the core. A game can have a budget of $5 million, $20 million, or $200 million. If you focus on the core and make it fun, it can be successful for you. That’s definitely something I learned when I came to Saber. It took a while.

GamesBeat: You can’t really talk about all of that, but when you look at all the things Embracer has done, is there anything you’ve learned from being a part of it?

Willits: You know we’re not at Embracer anymore. I love all those teams. I think we’ve said this publicly, but having too much autonomy across all the pillars and having too many overlapping groups – that ultimately hurt us. The company has brought together a lot of great talent. I’m still friends with all those people. They’re really smart. What they’re doing now is smart. But one day, when someone writes the book, it’s going to be a fascinating read.

We were lucky. We bought ourselves back, for lack of a better explanation. Now we’re just doing what we were doing before.

GamesBeat: It’s always good to see the industry return to growth after tough times.

Willits: We focused on affordable areas of the world. I’ll tell you, you can work with a team anywhere in the world and they’ll do just as well as a team in California. That’s an example. You focus on the strengths of the team. Some of our projects, they don’t have to sell 4 million copies to be profitable. They just have to do well. We were very clear on our estimates. We were very clear on what we were burning every month. We were very clear on our checkpoints. We run and manage a tight ship.

Look at the projects we’ve done. They’re ridiculous. They’re all great. With teams of the right size and talent, you make smart decisions.

GamesBeat: Do you have any thoughts on where id is going from the outside?

Willits: They’re going to do great things forever. I’m not worried about that. I’m excited about the new game. For us, we want to continue to grow, find teams of the right size, and then evaluate the things that we do well. We’ve done great things with our film licenses. We’ve done great things with our simulation games. We’re hoping that games like Jurassic Park can, ah, knock it out of the park.

GamesBeat: What else is in your area of ​​responsibility?

Willits: My title is chief creative officer. We have a handful of people who really run the company. I personally do everything. I work on studio strategy. I work on game concepts. I work with the teams to make sure they’re going in the right direction. Sometimes teams over-commit. You focus on what buttons to push. You focus on core gameplay. I worked on acquisitions. We acquired a company one year. I do marketing. I do everything. It’s great.

I work with Matt and Andrey and that’s it. It’s not hard to make decisions when there are only four people making them. No nonsense. You just snap your fingers to make a decision. I’m very lucky.

Disclosure: Devcom paid for my travel to Cologne, where I moderated two sessions at the event.