How Hitman’s wasteful toilets taught IO Interactive to make sustainable AAA games

I don't put a lot of pride in size. Uh I put a lot of pride in being impactful with people. Post absolution. I felt like we wasted so much. It was a wasteful production. As production studio production director back then, I completely changed our thinking. Hello and welcome to the game business show with me, Christopher Dream. Earlier the month, I attended Summer GameFest and the IO interactive showcase to speak with the hitman, publisher, and developer. I've been following the IO story from the moment they split away from Square Enix, and I've spoken to the team numerous times as they signed the James Bond license, started making a fantasy game, opened new studios across Europe, moved into self-publishing, and even started third party publishing. These past few weeks has been a big moment in the IO story. It's finally broken cover on it James Bond game 007 First Light. It's coming in 2026, which was one of the big reveals of Summer GameFest. But it also showcased new content for its Hitman game World of

Assassination, including a James Bond crossover featuring the character of Shiffra as played by Mads Mickelson. Reaper, unusual name. Names are for friends. Hitman also launched on Switch 2 a few weeks ago. It's coming to mobile, and the firm announced it's developing a Hitman co-op mode, too. In addition to all that, IO Interactive published Minds Eye from Build a Rocket Boy. The game was only a few days from release when I did this interview, so we don't talk about it too much, although there's obviously a lot of interesting things to say there. So, here is my interview with IO CEO Hacken Abra, where we discuss all these developments, but also chat about its approach to making AAA looking video games in a challenged market. Check it out. Hello, Hacken. Welcome to the show. Thank you. As I say, I feel like I've been on this journey with you over the last 5 years. We've done interviews on the Brighton office. Every time you open a new country, your self-publishing, signing 007, the mind's ideal, and now you're breaking cover on what you've been doing. To me, this feels like a

significant moment. Is Is that how it feels to you? Oh. Oh, it is. It is. It's been um especially Bond, it's been a long time coming and um being finally able to unveil and show uh it's been extremely satisfying and extremely satisfying for the team back home because I don't think people think about this but you work and put your passion into this and work on things like this for five six years and it's towards the end that you get to show the world and get that feedback uh from the world on on what you've been doing. So, um there's a lot of pride, a lot of blood, sweat, and tears that goes into these things. So, uh I just feel the joy of the team back home, which is going to give them a second wind uh to finish strong the game itself. I hear the numbers have been great on the trailers on the YouTube on on the YouTube. So, how old do I sound which is is obviously reassuring and and suggest that you've you've cut through.

I was a bit worried because when the when the whole app thing happened with Bond and Amazon and and all the changes there, were there any challenges around the shifting of the guard in that side? We've we've always had a good uh partnership uh with MGM throughout from the get-go and now Amazon MGM. Uh so no, I think the most important thing is with that throughout this whole period there's been a lot of support uh there's been a lot of trust uh also with Amazon coming on. So the important thing for us is the vision uh for who Bond is and story and approach uh we've taken to this that that we've been able to keep that intact uh throughout uh all this time. Um, and honestly it's um it's a bit of a privilege to be able to put a lot of your own um fingerprints uh to such a you know legend IP, you know. Uh so um we're just

very grateful uh with our partners that we can do an original Bond uh reimagined uh becoming story and and an original story really. So um yeah, we're very grateful uh because we we created five original IPs. We're creating our sixth with the project fantasy and uh so this is the first where we're working on somebody else's IP. So uh so it's extremely important for us to put some of IO in there and and that we got to do that uh is is just fantastic and in many ways you are James Bond at the momentum is the uh um other thing of it. What's your goal then? Obviously, you got this game to get out first, but with the Hitman series, you you released games quite regularly and you bundled it all together. It was quite an interesting way of approaching it rather than taking 5 years between each iteration. Obviously, this is different. It's a little bit more story driven. Do you have a similar thoughts on how you would develop this as a franchise? Well, we'll come into a lot more details later about

this. Uh but we obviously have tons of experience now from world assassination and tons of experience how to extend a single player experience and keep giving you know desirable free content also to players. So the first objective for us with bond is with um 7 first light is to you know just come out with the best possible most impactful journey to the gamers out there. Again, without going too much detail, you could expect that we'll be doing, you know, applying some of our learnings from World Assassination to to Bond as well. So, you shouldn't have. And the thing with Bond is apart from creating these living, breathing social spaces as well, we have really upped you know and stealth, we have really evolved our action aspects of our technology and features,

seamless combat in and out of ranged and uh and mele. For Hitman it was interlocked animations. here is free form and you saw the driving the car in in in the trailer. So driving different exotic cars and whatnot that also gives us more tangents to play on to create challenges like you have in Hitman you have these life challenges and whatnot. So uh besides the things that we are able to do in Hitman, we can do more actiony things or uh more uh kinetic experiences, challenges in Bond. Soon we'll be talking about what happens after the campaign. Yeah. Okay. Well, I look forward to finding out. I wouldn't

expect you to tell me anyway. um when you started on this journey of sort of expanding IO beyond the Hitman shortly after the you know the the the buyout um the industry was in a very different place to the one it is today it's an almost unpredictable place and you were seeing games including big AAA games based on established successful IP like you know I won't expect you to talk about them but Star Wars Outlaws and stuff like that none of them are sure bets anymore right there's no there's no guarantees at the moment in games how mindful are you that with with what you're doing and how what gives you a little bit more confidence that perhaps you won't be you're not you're an exception or not an exception that is going to go well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Of course. Uh well, you're never sure. Mhm. First of all, right? It's always um you know these big AAA games are always risky. Mhm. Um but we have to like we re rely on our experience and our feeling on when things are there. So, it's both being

honest and having a gut feel about whether this is, you know, the IO magic. Is is that in here? Is that going to be a good experience, an attractive uh exciting experience for for the gamers out there? Is it going to be true to a Bond experience? That's one thing. But next to that, you're obviously also doing a lot of tests. I know you have people coming in uh alongside when you're developing doing external tests or getting some external feedback on whether this is attractive right so while there's no guarantee I honestly feel I'm very close to the production right I honestly feel that we have something very very special here I honestly feel that we're pushed on areas we've never been able to uh do before and I honestly feel that this could be this could be a bond for our generation. I know that's big words but uh but there is there is confidence and but again you never know but I feel good about where we are and uh the big ultimate test will

come when we give it in the hands of our our gamers. The cost of making games keeps going up though and we're seeing publishers raising their prices and and all that kind of stuff to try and compensate for that. But how are you managing the increased budget demands and the impact on your on margins? Yeah, it's a huge challenge, but um somehow I think IO has been able to punch above our weight. What I mean by that is if you just look at Hitman, the way we built, especially after Absolution, I was the EP on Absolution and I swore never to do more new toilets. Just do new toilets, right? Like we were just doing new everything. We're doing something and it was just a throwaway. And um while the first installment the the initial building the initial uh foundation on Hitman 16 we built in a way where we would we knew we would do smart accumulated content. So, without being too precise, uh, Hitman 16, let's

say back then, that if that was $100 million, uh, Hitman 2 was, uh, maybe 60, 50, Hitman 3 was $20 million, and Hitman 3 was, uh, the highest Metacritic. Uh, it was 85, 84, and 87 Metacritic. And, uh, very unique new locations and all that, right? So obviously there's um it's it's a bigger investment into bond. It's a more expensive and more ambitious uh product but I think still the way we build it I think uh the longevity for prolonged experience and if you were to look at SQL at one point who knows um then I think we have at IO really really good way of trying to be efficient. So that that's extremely important to us. When that is said, we are extremely grateful right now in the industry. We're seeing a lot of restructuring. Yeah. I mean the industry is maybe in in have some challenges now. But I think

maybe that's natural after what I called the gold rush uh during a corona ride. And I think there was a feeling of yeah a gold rush a feeling like uh investors just investing in a lot of things that maybe not was with the heart or passion or uh overinvesting really taking risks uh because I think there was an expectation that the industry will grow ridiculously year on year uh but as with all industries our industry is also going through maturity and through phases. And I think that's what we are living through now. I I think for IO's sake, we've been trying to because we could have grown a lot more. We could have taken on more projects, but I think we've been very mindful about growing with the pace where our culture and our expertise could follow and the partnership we have on the fantasy project is a good financial partner. And

Hitman is as a single player service is doing uh it's really uh weird but it's atypical for single player game is just doing better and better every year. The numbers are great and bond that's what we are fully investing in and um you know we've come a long way and around the corner and the numbers on Hitman are fantastic. Yeah I knew obviously known it done well but to see it on stage was it 80 million players 25 million unit sales just incredible. So interesting. You're talking about a franchise approach, a long-term franchise approach to your games. It's not just about the investment you're making in a game. It's not just about this one game, it's about the second, it's about the third. And I I I don't feel that all companies think like that um at the moment in terms of thinking we spend this investment now, you know, we may not get the margin we want or we'll get quite the level of return, but the next one will be more profitable and the one after that. Yeah. I don't know. Like I I think for us it's um yeah again post absolution I felt like we wasted so much. It was a wasteful production as production studio

production director back then I completely changed our thinking. M so the wall of assassination that's a vision that started 13 14 ago years ago where the the building this foundation the the brick system as we call it uh where we can make uh quick yeah where we can make experience like mass Mickelson with the shifra like very very quickly and very efficiently this was a really part of uh thinking of creating sustainable AAA production and um you know I'm not going to sit here and say we are just doing everything right but I think there's There's something we're doing right there and and we'll keep on trying to improve that and and uh be less wasteful uh but yet still super ambitious. You launched a game what day is it? Yesterday on Switch 2. You got James Bonds coming to Switch 2. Why were you so eager to jump on board with Nintendo? Well, we we did uh a they had a cloud solution at one point. So, we got Hitman on the cloud before. Um, but

I think without uh hurting anyone's feelings, I think uh the cloud solution on Switch wasn't as successful as Nintendo expected. And we felt like felt like it was such a shame that it didn't take off like um so we felt like it was unfinished business really uh to uh get Hitman World Assassination in a proper way to the Switch to for uh the players who have that as their preferred platform that they could experience that there as well. And there's also, you know, these ongoing uh elusive targets and live experiences. We do the freelancer rogike edition. We did it's modes that they could keep playing and you can play on the go. So it lends itself really well for a platform like Switch 2. So we thought we we had something a game that was very compatible for playing on the on the go. So we thought we we we needed to kind of deliver that and we owed that to deliver

that in a native uh way on the platform. So uh that's what we did. So busy. You've got switch two versions. You've got um mobile version of the game. You've got um Mind's Eye. Your publishing team must be flat out at the minute. Yeah, I mean it's uh we like to keep ourselves busy and uh like we have been publishing forever under Square. We are very studioled. So it's muscles that we have trained for for many many years. So uh since 2008 n really. So how are you finding publishing someone else's game? What's that experience been like? Well, it's it's very different. In some ways, you're in front seat and other ways you're in back seat uh more, right? Like where we uh used to be front seat with everything we do because like doing our own games and publishing our own games. So, it's making sure to listen to the needs and the wishes of you know the creative team that you are that you're working with. And I think from our

experiences working with with publishers that helped us also to understand okay what what is it what is it they need and what would be mindful to do in this situation right so I think yeah of course it's different but uh it's been very very close close collaboration and close communication with them it's not like we are publishing you know a big publishing house we're publishing 10 10 external games right so uh we're learning from this right as we go along and trying to uh you you know, do do as well as we can and and and do better uh all the time. When you opened your Brighton studio, I was looking back for old interviews we've done and you and you said to me at the time you you potentially you might be able to reach 400 employees in 18 months or or whatever. The industry changed a little bit since that point, but did you get there? We have we have 500 plus today. Oh wow. Yeah. So it Are you planning on much more expansion? Is there much more to come? No, I think I think again as I said it's it's not for the sake of expanding. Mhm. Uh it's for I think uh

what what are our creative juices? What are the projects they really love and bleed for uh want to realize and that's that's what we are then uh realizing right. So again, I don't put any, if you know what I mean, I don't put a lot of pride in size. No. Uh, I put a lot of pride in being impactful with people uh and and making impactful projects that that do that leave a longlasting uh impact on people on our gamers and fans. So whether it's a 500 or 450 or 6 to 600 like we have our hands full right now admittedly with uh with Bond and with Hitman and with the project uh Fantasy. So right now it will be these franchises that we'll be focusing on for a foreseeable future. I'll ask one more question. You sort of answered a little bit bit there which is where do you see IIO in the next 3 to 5 years? Where where do you hope it will be? I hope we still will be in a place where we have

this freedom and this autonomy and that we have motivation through accountability that we have within our four walls. So that independence is very important uh right now and I think with that energy and that drive be able to realize our dreams for the games that we want to do. Hitman is in a great place and we just announced Hitman co-op up today that we're working on that. I think like it's my it's been my personal uh dream for a long time to be able to play Hitman co-op because I think that sandbox there's so many uh unique experiences there to be to be had. So that's very exciting and it's going very strong with that and Bond well you just saw it this week. Uh so it's uh next year it's just around the corner and hopefully that's going to be something special. and uh the project fantasy, we can't wait to talk about it. That's um an incredibly ambitious project as well.

So, I hope we can keep on competing or realizing games on this level and that we have the means and the energy to do so 3 5 years from now. Whether there's another franchise there, I don't know, but uh right now we are fulfilled and hopefully we are that 3, four, 5 years from now as well. I'm sure you will. Thank you, Hackam. Thank you. We appreciate that. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of the Game Business Show. We will of course be keeping a close eye on 007, Hitman, and Minds Eye going forward. We will be back later in the week with more news and analysis. So to make sure you don't miss a thing, head to the business.com and put in your email and therefore you will receive all the information in our handy newsletter. Until next time, thank you for tuning in.