Sucker Punch will remain a single-project studio after Ghost of Yotei, boss suggests
“If we were good at juggling four projects, yeah, we’d have a remaster… But we only get to do one thing”
PlayStation’s Sucker Punch studio will remain a single-project developer following Ghost of Yotei’s release, it’s suggested, so fans shouldn’t expect it to work on multiple franchises simultaneously soon.
Speaking to VGC in a broad Ghost of Yotei retrospective interview, Sucker Punch co-founder and studio head, Brian Fleming, discussed the developer’s determination to stay relatively small in triple-A terms, and how it will decide its next project after multiplayer add-on Ghost of Yotei: Legends releases next year.
“The truth is that whatever we do next, whether it’s continuing Ghost or going back to Sly, the decision is really more limited by, again, our cherishing of focus and time to iterate, which means that we really can only do one thing at a time,” he said.
“If we were good at juggling four projects, yeah, we’d have a remaster, and let’s go do one of those, and one of those, and do some fan request, that would be really popular… But we only get to do one thing.
“So it kind of has to be your best idea, right? And that’s really clarifying. It’s not like there aren’t 15 good ideas. But you only get to do one. And by the way, you only get to do one about every five years. So that choice is really important. I mean, that is choosing your college and your major every five years.”
He continued: “And you could go to Cambridge, but you could also go to UCLA. And you could also decide you’re going to go to the Peace Corps, but you can only do one of those in the next five years. Wow, that’s a really big decision. You’d better think carefully about it.”
With Sucker Punch’s 30th anniversary approaching in 2027, many fans will be hoping to see a return of its classic franchises like Sly and InFamous. According to Fleming, diversity of expectations is a challenge it also faces internally, as well as from its fans.
“At 30 years, we now have employees who are kids of former employees. We have employees who weren’t born when the studio was founded,” he said.
“And you also have had enough changes from Sly, to InFamous, to Ghost that part of those changes, when they happen, is that it means not just you’re walking away from Tsushima, and not just that you’re walking away from the actors in Tsushima, but you’re walking away from employees who’ve been a part of the studio for the last decade, because they don’t want to do a game set in a historical setting.”
The director of the InFamous series recently said he’d love to revisit the franchise one day, but suggested that no such plans are currently on the table.
