BIG BAD WOLF

How MACHINE GAMES reversed the reputation of licensed games

Jeremy Peel

A UNIT FORGED IN HARDSHIP THAT WOULD PROVE TO LAST DECADES Jens Matthies is laughing somewhat incredulously. Although his clothes are casual, his body language is guarded. It’s QuakeCon 2017, and I’ve just told the creative director of MachineGames that some people are saying single-player games are dead. “People,” he retorts. “What people?” “People in the industry,” I suggest, unconvincingly. And so Matthies continues to laugh. I’m not sure what kind of response I expected: he and his team have bet their careers on the argument that single-player games are very much alive. That no matter how many times publishers chop the head off story-led adventures, developers will succeed in reanimating them. It’s a conviction that set in years before MachineGames was founded, back when its core team worked at…

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PC Gamer United Kingdom (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2021

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