Mads Prahm: I'd like to compare Lynch to Kane, if I could, because Kane and Lynch are very different. The first game was more Kane's game, and focused on the ex-mercenary and controlling a squad and offering something of a tactical edge. You're planning things, and dealing with situations in a professional manner.
That's the exact opposite of Lynch – he's unprofessional, he's untrained and he just improvises his way out of things. And most of the decisions he makes only gets himself into more trouble. In this game, he doesn't really want to be in this fight. He wants to be with his girlfriend and left in peace. But he screws up things because he doesn't really think ahead and he improvises too much.
SPOnG: Is there room to explore this further, into a fully-fledged series? You guys mentioned in the presentation that Dog Days was 'Part 2' of a two-parter, but with a movie coming up do you think you might expand on the characters in the future?
Mads Prahm: I would say we're taking this one game at a time. At IO we've been pretty good over the last few years at expanding the types of games we create, producing new brands and characters – so I figure we will be expanding on that side of things. As for Kane and Lynch... I can't really say.
Mads Prahm: We're still using the Havok physics, but it's a new version of it. We've completely rewritten the rendering system engine, maybe you could see that in the presentation. That's our take on next-gen graphics, and we really wanted to push that graphical style in a new direction. Lots of other technical stuff, like streaming and things like that.
SPOnG: This is a bit of a touchy subject, and you guys mentioned it at the very beginning of your presentation. But obviously there is this controversy about review scores these days, and Kane and Lynch was very much in the centre of that. How did that spotlight make you feel at the time, particularly when some gamers don't really separate publisher and developer actions?
Mads Prahm: It was terrible for us at the studio, because it made all the gamers turn against us, or at least against the game itself. Everybody would go onto a game site and rate the game really low – of course, we got some mixed reviews anyway, but that sort of protest reviewing really amplified the overall negative rating.
It was devastating for us. I think it was also the first time that we got some mixed reviews and we weren't used to that.
Mads Prahm: I think a lot of people don't realise the difference, no. But from following forums that talk about games like the Hitman series, I know that there are also a lot of people who do know the studio, and can distinguish them against the publisher.
Our biggest fans could probably identify us, but [at the time of Kane & Lynch: Dead Men's release] there was a lot of people who didn't know us that would have bought our game [Kane & Lynch: Dead Men], but decided not to because they had heard about the controversy. And that hurts us, both in an economic sense and also in terms of our pride.
Mads Prahm: Well, we reacted to the mixed reviews quite a lot actually. We didn't really pay much attention to the controversy-protest comments, but the real, honest reviews really made us change the way we test our games. Now we're using consumer testing and other tests, and we've not been through a process like this before.
We've had so many people playing this game and we've been listening to their feedback and noting how the game behaves when they play it. Then we get a new bunch of people come in and play it. So in a way I think this situation has been good for us. A wake up call, right? We're willing to listen to people and ready to make changes to get our shit together (laughs).
SPOnG: I wish you all the best with that. Mads Prahm, thanks very much for your time.
Mads Prahm: Thank you very much.