Rebellion are a more interesting lot than they appear. You’ve probably noticed that they continue to make Sniper Elite games at regular intervals – but maybe not that they also own and publish all the 2000AD comics, and once bravely attempted to make a Judge Dredd FPS.
They have, in the words of their CEO, “almost got too much IP”. So what does their future hold? Let’s take a gruesome X-Ray of Jason Kingsley’s brain.
“What about a Nazi Zombie Army that’s completely open world?”, he asks PCGamesN, apropos of nothing.
In our Sniper Elite 3 interview, Kingsley said Rebellion’s trajectory is “definitely upwards”.
“We’ve got a portfolio approach, so we’re looking at different types of game, different formats,” he said. “We’ve got the book publishing and the comic book publishing and all of that as well, so it’s kind of fun.”
Asked if the company had been tempted by crowdfunding, Kingsley said Rebellion had tentative plans for something this year – but pointed out that the developer’s most famous series, Aliens vs Predator, is owned by Fox.
“Some of the 2000AD brands like Judge Dredd or Rogue Trooper and some of the more modern ones might be worth revisiting,” he said. “We’ve almost got too much IP! We don’t necessarily want to do a comic book IP because we’re a games company as well; the two can work together well, but don’t necessarily have to. What about a Nazi Zombie Army that’s completely open world?”
Kingsley hasn’t played DayZ – he doesn’t like the sound of the griefing and “player hassle”. But he has played through State of Decay more than once, and prefers Fallout: New Vegas in its scavenger mode. An open-world survival game of Rebellion’s own is something he’s “always wanted to get involved with” – though he reckons the studio will “steer away from zombies a bit”.
“Now that we’re making our own games [independently] that’s something that I think we could do quite well with our own tech,” he said. “But we’ve got more Sniper Elite potentially to do, more Nazi Zombie Army, we’ve got things like Rogue Trooper, classic games from the past to maybe look at revisiting.
“Even Aliens vs Predator… we’ve got a lot of choices, and one of the problems when you’re independent is deciding what you do next.”
What would you like to see Rebellion do next? There’s still a great open world to made of Mega-City One, surely?