It’s been a good year so far for Funcom with the success of Conan Exiles and the impending relaunch of The Secret World. CEO Rui Casais recently sat down to an interview discussing both the Nordic development scene for video games and the specific future of Funcom, including the company’s focus on the Conan IP. Casais points out that it’s not really a focus born of recent entertainment trends; rather, it’s just that a lot of Funcom’s staff knows the Conan lore in great detail, and it’s a setting that lends itself to a wide variety of game styles.
As for MMORPGs specifically, he says,
“There are still many players enjoying this space and we continue to invest in it as is proven by our relaunch of The Secret World coming this spring. We do see that some players have gotten a bit of fatigue from the very large time commitment that these games tend to require and are moving on to our online social gaming experiences, and we plan to create some of those experiences as well, just like we’re doing with Conan Exiles.”
Casais also stresses that while Conan Exiles might not have the traditional narrative story that many Funcom games have, it’s still meant to have a rich story moving in the background, more of a different approach to storytelling rather than an outright abandonment. He notes that while there are a lot of games in the survival sandbox genre, it’s not a “competitive” genre in the usual sense, as it’s very possible for players to play one for a while, move on, and then go back later. Last but not least, there are hints of more (“a few,” he says) games to be announced this year, which is good news for fans of the studio’s projects.
