The enjoyable factor about making a sport primarily based on an enormous film property is that you just get to hobnob with Hollywood royalty. The dangerous information is that it is via Jira.
Joel Bylos, chief creative officer at Funcom, explains that whereas making Dune Awakening, the studio needed to run varied issues by Legendary, the corporate behind the Dune films. “We submit issues to Jira, they approve inside a sure period of time,” he explains, namedropping the broadly used project-management software program that is both an absolute godsend or a relentless destroyer of pleasure, relying on your private perspective. “If they do not approve inside a sure period of time, we escalate to them: ‘Hey, we’d like you to approve this’. Normally it is a fairly automated course of. It runs fairly solidly.”
This may occasionally all sound disappointingly bland, however that very blandness is the signal of a profitable working relationship. Bylos says Funcom has constructed belief with the movie studio, reassuring them that their valuable IP was in protected fingers. “Once you’ve established that belief, the processes aren’t essentially as vital: it is extra about simply understanding that the opposite folks have the IP’s again.” Therefore the approval course of may be decreased to the flick of a Jira ticket, quite than, say, offended cellphone calls from movie executives.
Legendary decides whether or not to escalate any requests up the chain, resembling to writer Frank Herbert’s property or to film director Denis Villeneuve. Bylos says one piece of suggestions from Villeneuve was that the sport’s title “might be a little bit too near Star Wars” – i.e., The Power Awakens – however evidently, Dune Awakening gained via in the long run.
All this can be a far cry from the lax oversight of licensed video games within the final century, when the online game tie-in was usually little greater than an afterthought. Sport and movie corporations are working extra carefully collectively than ever earlier than – and what’s actually attention-grabbing is the concept that sport corporations may look extra like movie corporations sooner or later.
As Code Wizards head Stuart Muckley outlined to GamesIndustry.biz as a part of ExDev Week, the rise in undertaking financing that we’re seeing within the video games business (versus corporations taking fairness stakes in video games corporations) implies that “it’s extremely doubtless sport initiatives will begin to observe a mannequin just like the film enterprise, the place a authorized entity is created for every sport.” In different phrases, every sport turns into an organization.
Bylos can see the sense in it: “You unfold the monetary threat right into a holding firm, which is how Hollywood works, proper? There’s financing per undertaking as a substitute of an organization placing every thing on the road. In order that they’re like, ‘Oh, here is the Dune undertaking, if you wish to put money into the Dune undertaking, that is what you do’. However then the investor is not investing in, say, Funcom essentially.”
It is vital to notice the above is a hypothetical situation – for now at the least. And Bylos emphasises that there may need to be modifications within the video games business if it was to maneuver in direction of a movie-style mannequin the place individuals are employed on particular video games, most likely on fixed-term contracts. “I feel the Hollywood mannequin works as a result of they’ve very robust unions,” he says. “It is simple for folks to be exploited if you do not have robust unions.”
Automobile wash improve
Bylos has been with Funcom for a very long time: practically 20 years, in reality. He married a Norwegian and moved to Norway from Australia within the early 2000s. “I discovered it was fairly troublesome to get English work – I needed to be taught Norwegian,” he says. “I washed automobiles at a automobile rental place for the primary three years that I lived there.”
“Once I was washing automobiles, I puzzled, ‘Am I all the time going to be doing this? As a result of I’ve a college diploma from Australia’.”
His fortunate break got here in 2007, when he secured a job as a quest designer on Funcom’s Age of Conan. He would later turn out to be creative director on Conan Exiles, and took on the newly created position of chief creative officer for Funcom in 2019. Proper now, his preoccupation is with the launch of PC hit Dune Awakening on consoles, which coincides with an enormous replace to the multiplayer survival sport.
“I feel most likely the most important change is the truth that we added a single participant mode,” he says. As well as, in response to participant suggestions, Funcom has added varied choices to regulate the sport’s issue. “It is basically creative mode from Minecraft,” he says. “Folks wish to have the flexibility to customize their video games extra and extra, I feel. It is simply turning into form of commonplace.”
All of this naturally concerned an enormous quantity of labor. “Multiplayer steadiness is totally totally different to single participant steadiness,” Bylos notes. “After which clearly you optimise the hell out of a sport for a console. The consoles have totally different necessities, however there’s one thing good about having a dependable piece of {hardware} that does not change.”
The console ports additionally gave Funcom the prospect to mess around with the haptics and adaptive triggers within the PlayStation DualSense controller. “It is very good to work with. We now have alternatives in Dune that I feel match very nicely, just like the sandworm and the vibrations once you’re strolling on the sand.”
Bylos is hoping that the console launch will usher in a “entire surge” of gamers, and Funcom has been fascinated about how finest to maintain them taking part in. “We have been how we push our retention extra, issues like having extra occasions within the sport, holding folks in longer,” he says.
Funcom may also attempt totally different monetisation fashions in future. At present, Dune Awakening is a premium title with varied paid DLCs, however Bylos notes that Funcom has experimented with totally different fashions previously, like in Conan Exiles.
“Finally we moved to a battle go retailer mannequin, and then we dropped the battle go as a result of that wasn’t actually the factor, however we saved the shop. I assume Dune will observe an analogous factor. We’ll see the traits, and we’ll see what’s occurring, and then we’ll see what is sensible for us.
“I feel it’s important to with reside service video games, proper? I feel you simply do not know what is going on to occur. Even in my profession, it was MMOs with subscriptions, and then all of the MMOs dropped subscriptions and grew to become pay as soon as – Guild Wars 2 actually pioneered quite a lot of that – and then it has been free to play with monetisation. It is now form of a large number and they’re all totally different.
“I’ve lately seen quite a lot of articles speaking about in-game promoting… it is humorous as a result of folks do not know that we pioneered that in Anarchy On-line”
“The enterprise fashions have upgraded and modified a lot, and you by no means know what the following one’s going to be. I’ve lately seen quite a lot of articles speaking about in-game promoting making an enormous comeback. We would not try this in Dune, nevertheless it’s humorous as a result of folks do not know that we pioneered that in Anarchy On-line, our outdated sport from 2001. And it made sense: it was a sci-fi, futuristic metropolis, and we had banners within the sport that have been paid promoting from corporations outdoors the sport.
“We acquired first rate cash for that, and it did not actually impression participant expertise. And it is simply humorous to see that that is making a comeback now, that enterprise mannequin.”
All fingers on deck
Funcom introduced a wave of layoffs in late 2025 to be able to focus on releasing new content material for Dune Awakening. Shortly afterwards, it was revealed that the Funcom-owned studio The Outsiders – maker of Metallic: Hellsinger – can be closing.
So, is the studio solely working on Dune Awakening now?
“No, we have now folks working on Conan Exiles nonetheless,” says Bylos. “The improved version got here out earlier within the yr, and there is a only a few folks like me [whose] job is to consider the long run, so I am additionally what’s subsequent after Dune.
“However yeah, the vast majority of individuals are on Dune Awakening, and that is form of the way in which it’s going to keep, I might say, for fairly some time. We’re not prepared to start out a brand new sport, so it is actually simply wispy ideas at the back of our heads about what might be subsequent.
“It is humorous, with sport growth, I really feel like there’s all the time this sport of [predicting the] technological future. You are attempting to learn the place the know-how’s going to be in 5 years, and proper now with AI, I do not suppose you possibly can see the place the know-how’s going to be in 5 months. It makes that sport very troublesome to play.”
He thinks that is partly why funding is so exhausting to come back by within the present atmosphere. “I feel all people’s holding their breath, ready to see what comes from it.”
“My feeling is that video games are going to should optimise higher and stay working on core platforms”
What about cell? TiMi Studio Group – which, like Funcom, is owned by Tencent – is on the cusp of releasing Monster Hunter Outlanders, a cell model of Capcom’s franchise that options nearly all of the performance of its console counterparts, due to enhancements in cell know-how. So would Funcom take into account porting Dune Awakening to cell units?
“I do not suppose our experience is there,” says Bylos. “I feel Tencent has higher studios than Funcom to develop cell video games. It is simply not what we’re good at… Our experience is in different areas.”
However Bylos does see a pattern in direction of gaming on the go, in addition to the necessity for video games to run on comparatively low-powered machines. “I feel we’ll see extra and extra of those Steam Deck-like units,” he says. “My feeling is that video games are going to should optimise higher and stay working on core platforms. The consoles are going to become old, and they’re most likely not going to launch new ones till the reminiscence disaster is resolved, as a result of in any other case their margins will not make sense. So I feel extra and extra video games are going to turn out to be extra stylised and much less reminiscence heavy.”
He notes that the race to photorealism remains to be an enormous preoccupation within the business, however this runs counter to the truth of a technology of youngsters who grew up taking part in Roblox. “They do not give a rattling about graphics, not one bit. I see it with my children. They do not care, they need the gameplay. So I feel it will be extra true than ever that gameplay is king, and you optimise in direction of regardless of the low powered platforms are. I feel Steam Deck is an ideal instance.”
Video games like Meccha Chameleon that “can run on something” are what the viewers needs. “So the place does that depart a high-fidelity developer like us? It is a good query. I feel it is extra of a query about stylisation for the long run.”
He factors to World of Warcraft for example of a sport with stylised graphics which have stood the check of time. “It has been round for a very long time now, and it nonetheless seems actually good. Clearly they’ve upgraded a couple of issues, nevertheless it’s a form of timeless artwork path.”
Funcom’s subsequent sport would possibly nonetheless be on the wispy-thought stage, however given the prevailing winds of the sport business, it looks like a great guess that it’s going to lean extra into style than photorealism – and quite than being geared in direction of the high-spec units of the long run, it may nicely set the technological bar a lot decrease. In any case, as we enter the age of $1,000+ consoles, the vast majority of the viewers is prone to be taking part in on older machines for a few years to come back.