In an interview with GamesIndustry, Ubisoft Milan’s (the studio will be referred to as “Ubi Milan” from here on out) own Davide Solani sat down with Christopher Dring to discuss Sparks of Hope. In it, Solani stated that the team working on Sparks of Hope is “almost 4 times bigger” than that of Kingdom Battle’s team, and discussed the amount of time it took to onboard them onto the project:
The Sparks of Hope team is almost four times bigger than the one we had with Kingdom Battle. Which means there is a lot of restructuring you need to do, and a lot of management that you have to pull off. Also because we are now divided across many, many different studios, we need to communicate and share a lot more.
And when you increase a team three or four times, the on-boarding takes a lot of time. Just to get everyone on the same page, sharing the culture, sharing the love and the passion for what we are doing. But I think we have been all lucky, because I love working with all of them. And it’s really enriching because of all the different cultures.
[Davide Solani of Ubi Milan]
He also went further to discuss the pressures of making a sequel to Kingdom Battle, something we’re sure every game developer has felt at one point or another:
But if on Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle the pressure was 100%, in Sparks of Hope the pressure is 300%. There is always this period before the release, where we’re all going: ‘oh my god, let’s hope it will be nicely appreciated.’ You never know.
All it takes is for one small detail to be out of place. Or one person to say something wrong. Even on Kingdom Battle, we had been through a leak a couple of months before the official reveal at E3. And I remember going on forums and people were sending me the worst messages, which I’m not going to repeat. But then they changed their mind because they saw the game was made by people with passion. So we were lucky. It’s a tide you can’t control. You just hope for the best.
[Davide Solani of Ubi Milan]
Considering Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle was a huge success, we can definitely understand the pressure is on for Sparks of Hope. We look forward to covering the game when it releases next month.
[Source: GamesIndustry via GoNintendo]
