IO Interactive – Interview with Jonathan Lacaille, brand director at IO Interactive

Just a few months after your collaboration with Dimitri Vegas, you announced a new collaboration, this time with Sean Bean. Should we expect to see more high-profile guests like this in the future? Or is it just a coincidence?

Jonathan Lacaille: These collaborations have been a lot of fun to make, allowing us to bring new and unexpected content to our players. We create narratives that suit the public persona of these celebrities and find ways to integrate them into the world of assassination. Of course, we make them antagonists to fit the plot of our fugitive targets and to provide a reason why Agent 47 was hired to eliminate them. Combined with the creative freedom we give our players to accomplish their goals, this always ensures an entertaining gaming experience.

Sean Bean is the perfect example of a famous fugitive target with his numerous on-screen deaths and of course the various ways he was taken down, which explains a lot of the excitement for his return to the game.

Additionally, we're changing the way Runaway Targets are accessed this year as we're introducing them to our Free Starter Pack, meaning anyone can play them for free and Runaway Targets is available on all platforms. So, with the arrival of new players and taking into account the feedback from the community for the return of The Undying, we have looked at other fugitive targets and one of them could arrive sooner than expected, as we know. we recently shared on our social networks.

Dimitri Vegas' mission could only be attempted once, like the other fugitive targets, while Sean Bean's mission can be attempted as many times as we want. Why did you decide this change?

We're introducing The Undying to our Free Starter Pack, meaning newcomers to the world of assassination Hitman can discover the game for free through one of its most popular missions. As new players might not be used to the gameplay of HITMAN, the Free Starter Pack allows them to try the mission multiple times so they can learn the game through multiple attempts if they want.

Likewise, this new mission comes with a new DLC. What is the purpose of this additional content?

The DLC gives players the option to have permanent access to The Undying, giving them the same access as the Free Starter Pack, meaning if they fail the mission they will be locked out of the mission for 12 hours . This way, the tension of playing a runaway target mission is still there, but players can play one of their favorite missions over and over again.

Hitman 3 was released three years ago. The game has had many free updates and several DLCs, but no new destinations. Can we expect any news on this?

We have indeed brought a lot of new content to HITMAN. Just last year we added a new game mode with Freelancer and released a new fugitive target, The Drop, featuring superstar DJ Dimitri Vegas plus contracts, new challenges, and more. This year we brought back Sean Bean for the return of The Undying, which is currently running until April 21st. Each location is an incredible playground for our players, offering them thousands of hours of gameplay through the countless available ways to complete missions, giving them great freedom to play the way they want. Our destinations also provide a canvas for creating new experiences, with our teams able to bring new ideas to an existing location. As Freelancer Mode or The Drop showed, we have some good assets to work with and we're eager to bring out the potential of our destinations in new ways.

IO Interactive became independent in 2017. Can you explain how you have evolved since then? What were the advantages of this independence for you?

Becoming independent was a real turning point and allowed us to evolve and grow. Our independence means we have a lot of freedom in our decision-making and the direction the studio takes. For example, with the launch of HITMAN in 2016, we adopted a new model for launching a game solo, with a single launcher expanding with the addition of other locations, which allowed us to have a lot of flexibility in how we created the game. This has obviously been a great success for us in the long run, as HITMAN reached new heights both critically and commercially. We completed our vision for HITMAN with the launch of World of Assassination last year, which brought together all locations and missions on one platform, accompanied by Freelancer, a new game mode. We can now spread our wings and, with our next two games, Project 007 And Project Fantasythat's exactly what we do.

IO Interactive has founded four new studios since then. Could you explain this strategy?

Since the launch of Hitman 2, we knew we wanted to work on different projects outside of HITMAN, which became evident with Project 007 and Project Fantasy. Working on multiple projects at the same time also meant we had to grow to enable us to achieve our ambitions. One of our main concerns when growing is to avoid installing a “factory” feel in any of our studios, meaning that beyond a certain number of people in the same place, you lose your sense of belonging. We worked with Dunbar's number concept, set at around 150 people, to ensure we didn't exceed the critical mass of a single studio. By opening new studios in different countries, we can continue to keep our headcount below this critical mass in each studio, but also grow at level necessary to work on our three games. Due to growth philosophy regarding the number of people per studio, our main means of expansion is to open new studios in different locations. We took this opportunity to go where the talent is and to go to the main hubs of the games industry in Europe. Our studios are located in cities that have hosted major studios, giving us access to a deep pool of talent and inspiration. With our studios located in different countries, we obviously also benefit from the diversity they bring to our studio as a whole.

According to your website, you currently have three projects: Hitman World of Assassination, “Project 007” and “Project Fantasy”. How do you allocate your resources between these three games? Do some studios focus on one project or do they collaborate on all three?

At IOI we take a very fluid approach to how we work on our games. Each of our studios works on our different projects, which means that we don't have a main studio for a particular game. For example, the director ofHitman 3 worked from Malmö, while the executive producer was based in Copenhagen. This offers us great freedom and flexibility in the way we manage our different projects, but also in recruitment, because it means that new talents can join us via one of our five locations.

Since the start of the year, more than 8,000 jobs have been lost in the video game industry. There were already more than 10,000 last year. How is IO Interactive doing in this difficult context?

There have been many changes in the industry over the past few years: the pandemic, the growth of streaming, the digital transformation, which is intensifying, but above all inflation as well as the increase in production costs to create video games. All of these factors directly influenced each studio's decision-making, so we observe adjustments to the current market and future trends. At IOI, we ensure that we continue to grow stably and organically. We have carefully planned our next steps, moving from one game to three with Project 007, Project Fantasy and Hitman World of Assassination. Much like our growth philosophy for our studios, we remain responsible and prudent in how we plan for the future, but with the goal of providing the best possible experiences for our players.