Mark Webley, co-founder of Two Point Studios, is clear: "It was Gary's brainchild, really." Webley and Gary Carr had worked together on Theme Hospital at Bullfrog Productions in the 1990s, and both had gone on to roles at Lionhead, working on games including Fable and The Movies. By 2013, however, Webley had become disillusioned following Lionhead's change of focus under new owner Microsoft, which saw the studio put to work on Kinect games and live-service productions.
"I'd kind of had enough of games," he recalls, "because I had nothing to do with making games any more. It was just an exec job." Webley quit the industry, while Carr found himself in charge of an incubation department within Lionhead. "I had a little team of no more than about eight people trying to come up with new IP for Microsoft," Carr recalls.
"But that was almost impossible because in the 14 years we were there, there was never any new IP. It was always Fable, Gears Of War, Forza and Halo, so what were the chances of my team coming up with something they were prepared to greenlight?" Carr had, at least, built up a strong group, including Ben Hymers, "a really smart tech guy" who was a fan of the sim genre, and of Theme Hospital in particular.
"So I had a chat with him quietly," Carr remembers, "and I said, "If I was to go and speak to Mark and we were to spin up a little studio, would you be interested?" And he said yes." Carr approached Webley with the idea of forming Two Point Studios and making a kind of homage to Theme Hospital, a Bullfrog hit in 1997.
Webley recalls being sceptical: "I said, 'Who's going to be interested in a 20-year-old game?"" However, he was fond of his time working with Carr on the original game, which the pair had originally planned to follow with something built around the same concept but set in a holiday resort or a prison. However, EA, which had bought Bullfrog by this point, had other ideas.
"I think the [official] line was, 'It's not going to be a billion-dollar franchise'," Webley says. Still, Carr felt that there was still plenty of scope to explore within the comedy-sim-game concept.
"It just felt like there was money left on the table," he says. "We didn't have to be that billion-dollar franchise. We didn't have to sell multiple millions of units. People just liked the games, and we like making them, so why not just do it for that audience? And if you're not spending a fortune developing them, as long as they make a reasonable return, isn't that a business?"
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1725452903/articles/JTDHHjiky1725524754882/1775519110.jpg]
With Webley convinced, Carr left Lionhead in 2015, and they began approaching smaller publishers, including Team 17, with the concept For Two Point Hospital. "I think we thought there's no way EA or Sega or any of the bigger publishers would be interested in what we were imagining," Webley says. No smaller players, however, were willing to put up the £1.5m needed in the studio's business plan. ("Gary, do you remember what the first thing in the business plan was?" Webley asks.
"It was my Nespresso coffee machine," Carr laughs. "I'm so middle class." The pair rib each other during our interview, clearly comfortable in each other's company after the best part of 30 years working together, a seasoned double act.
"Like Ant and Dec's dads," Webley chuckles.)
After months of pitching, they finally attracted interest from Sega. There was just one problem. "The team we pretended to have didn't exist," Carr admits. Instead, he and Webley had a list of people working at Lionhead they'd identified as potential colleagues for the new venture.
They just had to convince them first. "And then we got to what was called 'heads of terms', where you're starting to work out the finer details of the contract, with still no team in place, just Mark and myself," Carr says. "Even Ben wasn't committed at this point, because he couldn't afford to do anything other than carry on working [at Lionhead]."
Then, out of the blue, Microsoft announced the closure of Lionhead in March 2016. "We were literally on the call with Sega," Carr recalls. "We were going through the contract details, and my phone kept buzzing, and I was just trying to turn it off and ignore it, but it just kept going." Eventually, Carr excused himself and took the call, which was from Mark Smart at Lionhead's art department.
"And he just said: 'They've closed the studio'. So suddenly all these people that we'd lied about, who we said were part of our team, we were able to contact and say: 'Do you want to come on board?' That was strangely fortuitous, really." Two Point Studios was officially founded in July 2016 with a dream team of former Lionhead employees. However, its business plan couldn't cover salaries to match what Lionhead had been paying. The solution? Give these early employees shares in the company itself. "We shared the company out, because we knew we couldn't give people what they were worth, and getting this thing off the ground really needed everyone's heart and soul," Webley says.
The founders also knew that launching a studio with a new IP would involve a lot of risk. "I've had some real ups and downs in my career," Carr says. "Some great games have done really not very well, and some average games have done OK. It's just weird, isn't it? You can't predict it." In the end, following its launch in 2018, Two Point Hospital exceeded all expectations.
"We recouped that advance in two and a half days," Carr says. "It was number one in 43 countries." "Gary, you were almost in a daze," Webley interrupts, prompting Carr to recall an anecdote about a cake that was sent to the studio to celebrate the launch. "It had this beautiful pink ribbon with a big bow on it, and I just put the bow on my big bald head, and I was just sobbing," Carr says.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1725452903/articles/JTDHHjiky1725524754882/5775050559.jpg]
"And then I went out into Farnham town, because I was beginning to make a bit of a fool of myself in the office, because | couldn't control my emotions, and I was just walking around town crying. I called my wife and said, 'It's worked - people like it. And I forgot I had this bow on my head."
Carr is full of praise for Sega’s role in the game’s success. Whereas a lot of publishers “tend to get too involved in the process and don’t let you get on with the creative side, Sega were brilliant,” he says. “They completely left the creative side to us.”
The Japanese publisher went on to acquire Two Point Studios in 2019. The deal raises the question: how concerned were Carr and Webley about selling up, considering wha...
"I'd kind of had enough of games," he recalls, "because I had nothing to do with making games any more. It was just an exec job." Webley quit the industry, while Carr found himself in charge of an incubation department within Lionhead. "I had a little team of no more than about eight people trying to come up with new IP for Microsoft," Carr recalls.
"But that was almost impossible because in the 14 years we were there, there was never any new IP. It was always Fable, Gears Of War, Forza and Halo, so what were the chances of my team coming up with something they were prepared to greenlight?" Carr had, at least, built up a strong group, including Ben Hymers, "a really smart tech guy" who was a fan of the sim genre, and of Theme Hospital in particular.
"So I had a chat with him quietly," Carr remembers, "and I said, "If I was to go and speak to Mark and we were to spin up a little studio, would you be interested?" And he said yes." Carr approached Webley with the idea of forming Two Point Studios and making a kind of homage to Theme Hospital, a Bullfrog hit in 1997.
Webley recalls being sceptical: "I said, 'Who's going to be interested in a 20-year-old game?"" However, he was fond of his time working with Carr on the original game, which the pair had originally planned to follow with something built around the same concept but set in a holiday resort or a prison. However, EA, which had bought Bullfrog by this point, had other ideas.
"I think the [official] line was, 'It's not going to be a billion-dollar franchise'," Webley says. Still, Carr felt that there was still plenty of scope to explore within the comedy-sim-game concept.
"It just felt like there was money left on the table," he says. "We didn't have to be that billion-dollar franchise. We didn't have to sell multiple millions of units. People just liked the games, and we like making them, so why not just do it for that audience? And if you're not spending a fortune developing them, as long as they make a reasonable return, isn't that a business?"
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1725452903/articles/JTDHHjiky1725524754882/1775519110.jpg]
With Webley convinced, Carr left Lionhead in 2015, and they began approaching smaller publishers, including Team 17, with the concept For Two Point Hospital. "I think we thought there's no way EA or Sega or any of the bigger publishers would be interested in what we were imagining," Webley says. No smaller players, however, were willing to put up the £1.5m needed in the studio's business plan. ("Gary, do you remember what the first thing in the business plan was?" Webley asks.
"It was my Nespresso coffee machine," Carr laughs. "I'm so middle class." The pair rib each other during our interview, clearly comfortable in each other's company after the best part of 30 years working together, a seasoned double act.
"Like Ant and Dec's dads," Webley chuckles.)
After months of pitching, they finally attracted interest from Sega. There was just one problem. "The team we pretended to have didn't exist," Carr admits. Instead, he and Webley had a list of people working at Lionhead they'd identified as potential colleagues for the new venture.
They just had to convince them first. "And then we got to what was called 'heads of terms', where you're starting to work out the finer details of the contract, with still no team in place, just Mark and myself," Carr says. "Even Ben wasn't committed at this point, because he couldn't afford to do anything other than carry on working [at Lionhead]."
Then, out of the blue, Microsoft announced the closure of Lionhead in March 2016. "We were literally on the call with Sega," Carr recalls. "We were going through the contract details, and my phone kept buzzing, and I was just trying to turn it off and ignore it, but it just kept going." Eventually, Carr excused himself and took the call, which was from Mark Smart at Lionhead's art department.
"And he just said: 'They've closed the studio'. So suddenly all these people that we'd lied about, who we said were part of our team, we were able to contact and say: 'Do you want to come on board?' That was strangely fortuitous, really." Two Point Studios was officially founded in July 2016 with a dream team of former Lionhead employees. However, its business plan couldn't cover salaries to match what Lionhead had been paying. The solution? Give these early employees shares in the company itself. "We shared the company out, because we knew we couldn't give people what they were worth, and getting this thing off the ground really needed everyone's heart and soul," Webley says.
The founders also knew that launching a studio with a new IP would involve a lot of risk. "I've had some real ups and downs in my career," Carr says. "Some great games have done really not very well, and some average games have done OK. It's just weird, isn't it? You can't predict it." In the end, following its launch in 2018, Two Point Hospital exceeded all expectations.
"We recouped that advance in two and a half days," Carr says. "It was number one in 43 countries." "Gary, you were almost in a daze," Webley interrupts, prompting Carr to recall an anecdote about a cake that was sent to the studio to celebrate the launch. "It had this beautiful pink ribbon with a big bow on it, and I just put the bow on my big bald head, and I was just sobbing," Carr says.
image [https://cdn.magzter.com/1387349800/1725452903/articles/JTDHHjiky1725524754882/5775050559.jpg]
"And then I went out into Farnham town, because I was beginning to make a bit of a fool of myself in the office, because | couldn't control my emotions, and I was just walking around town crying. I called my wife and said, 'It's worked - people like it. And I forgot I had this bow on my head."
Carr is full of praise for Sega’s role in the game’s success. Whereas a lot of publishers “tend to get too involved in the process and don’t let you get on with the creative side, Sega were brilliant,” he says. “They completely left the creative side to us.”
The Japanese publisher went on to acquire Two Point Studios in 2019. The deal raises the question: how concerned were Carr and Webley about selling up, considering wha...
You're reading a preview of
Edge Uk (Digital) - 1 Issue, November 2024