The times show that smaller is better when it comes to game studios | Harry Krueger interview

Finland-based game studio Cosmic Division formally launched a few weeks ago under the leadership of Harry Krueger.

After 15 years at Housemarque, Krueger decided to go out on his own with a team of game veterans.

He played a key role in creating titles such as Returnal, Nex Machina, and Resogun while at Housemarque. Krueger also helped shape the initial direction of the recently acclaimed Saros before full production began. The new studio aims to establish its own identity while building on years of experience crafting award-winning action experiences.

Games like Returnal — which won numerous awards including four BAFTAs — drew rabid fan bases in part because the games were so difficult and tuned to the tastes of hardcore players. I interviewed Krueger about his experience making those games and the kind of things he wants to build in the future.

Krueger, who started as a programmer, said he was grateful for the time at Housemarque but he needed to move on andfind a new edge with fresh themes, ideas and talent. His team carries the same values and he believes they can make a lasting impact.

The Helsinki, Finland-based company will be focused on quality and it is responsibly ambitious. It has a lean-and-mean philosophy and it emphasizes craftsmanship, lots of iteration and sustainable growth rather than scale.

The studio’s first project will be a new IP, that embodies Cosmic Division’s creative DNA. Designed as a single-player PC and console title, the game will deliver an unapologetically gameplay-first experience and a story with strong emotional resonance.

But Krueger is talking about the detail yet. Still, we managed to have a good conversation about the trends of the day and the issues that game developers face today.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview.

Harry Krueger is founder of Cosmic Division. Source: Cosmic Division GamesBeat: Can you tell me about your background before you started this new studio?

Harry Krueger: I started my career over in Japan at a studio called Q Games with Dylan Cuthbert. I started as a gameplay coder. That’s my background. I always used programming as a means to achieve a certain feeling, a certain gameplay result in a way, an experience. When I came to Finland, that was more than 15 years ago. I landed on my feet at Housemarque. I got to work on some amazing projects. I feel like I kind of won the lottery five times in a row, to be honest. Every project was like a dream project for me. I got to work with some amazing people. I’ve been privileged enough to stand on the shoulders of giants and work only on award-winning games so far. I got really lucky.

I worked on Outland, Resogun, Nex Machina, Returnal, and most recently I was also involved in Saros, where I worked on preproduction before departing. All of those experiences laid the foundations for the next chapter, which begins now with Cosmic Division.

GamesBeat: How big is the new team that you’ve started?

Krueger: Currently we’re just about five people. We’re starting small. We have this lean and mean ethos. It’s not just a marketing or PR tagline. It’s integral to how we’d like to operate. I believe that more is not always better. Usually it’s just more. We’re trying to stay as small as possible for as long as possible. Trying to find the right talent. Trying to find some partner studios to work with, whether it’s outsourcing, contractors and so on. Just trying to find a high-performing team that punches above its weight. Adopt a really fast iteration loop to be able to find the fun. It takes a lot of effort for something to feel effortless. We want to allow time for that. And just try to grow sustainably. Pick the right projects, find the right people, and ride this all the way to the sunset. That’s the idea.

Harry Krueger left Housemarque after 15 years. Source: Harry Krueger GamesBeat: Where has your taste in games gone over all this time? Are there things you find compelling that you want to work on?

Krueger: First and foremost, we do want to make games that we want to play. That’s the most motivating way to make games, at least from my perspective. We find our audience sooner or later. The experiences I had at Housemarque of course speak to a very particular type of creative DNA. A lot of that would naturally be expected to transfer to this new venture. The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. I think fans of our work will likely find a lot of familiar things to appreciate in our next project. But I think they might also be pleasantly surprised with a couple of new things, new twists that we’re exploring. We’re trying to establish our own unique voice at Cosmic Division. While confidently and unapologetically building on our strengths, I would say.

GamesBeat: The roguelike aspects of a game like Returnal, is that something you think fans enjoy more and more? Something that’s rewarding because it’s so challenging to finish.

Krueger: Challenge is an integral part of having a sense of accomplishment when you play games. That will likely be there in our next project as well. But it’s not just challenge for challenge’s sake. It’s about trying to create the most rewarding experience possible. Sometimes the only way to experience triumph is to flirt with despair. I do think that having a clean challenge that many players can enjoy, that’s one of the core gameplay pillars, let’s say, that we want to build games around.

Returnal was also–there are different flavors of difficulty as well. Returnal being a roguelike, luck is a component as well. You can have a run where you get really lucky. You get a build that’s really powerful. You can breeze through a lot of the content. Other times you get a bit less lucky. Things are a lot more challenging. Mastery is always there in the background as the key part of the experience, but the randomization adds extra layers to that as well.

Nex Machina in action. GamesBeat: Why did you think this was a good time to start a new studio? You come in at a time when so many studios have had a hard time of it.

Krueger: The timing could have been a bit better, honestly. I do recognize that the last couple of years, maybe more, have been quite challenging for the industry in general. It does feel like we started this venture at probably one of the most challenging times. But it does feel like things are slowly recovering now. I’m picking up a semblance of optimism when I talk to folks in the industry, which is great. It did take a while for us to navigate the landscape and find the right partners to start this thing together. Luckily we’re starting on a strong foundation now. We have our partners in place. We’ve announced the studio. We’ve been getting a positive reception. I’m optimistic about how the future looks.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/k4nSLa8a588?feature=oembed GamesBeat: Do you have funding in place now, or are you still looking for that?

Krueger: We do have our initial seed funding in place, yes. We have a healthy start for the team and the company and the project now. We have some wind in our sails, enough to get started on a strong footing. We’ll see what the future brings, but I do feel that we’re starting from a good position of strength right now.

GamesBeat: How much time do you think it’s going to take to get something out into the market? Whether it’s early access or a finished game, do you have a way of knowing that yet?

Krueger: It’s a bit too early to say what trajectory it will follow. Right now we’re focused on building the best possible prototype or demo of the game that we’re working on. We have a clear vision of what we want to accomplish. We have a lean and mean team. We’re working toward that singular vision. I’m excited to announce more about the game when the time is right.

If we have any particular philosophy for the studio, how we want to approach the game–there’s a few things there. One thing I’ve noticed recently is the lasting power of high-quality single-player experiences. I think they’re immune to trends. It’s always easy to focus on the big success of the latest multiplayer game or mobile games or whatever, but I do feel like single-player games have lasting power. Two hundred years from now we’ll still crave those high-quality single-player experiences. There’s a renewed confidence in pursuing that trajectory for our projects.

The other side of that equation is about sustainability, and about how to create these games effectively. Going back a bit to the lean and mean ethos, just throwing out some numbers there–even if I had an unlimited budget right now, I wouldn’t want to make a studio bigger than 50 people. I’d probably want to get there over the course of a few years. I wouldn’t want to grow too aggressively, because that carries its own risks. I feel like for the first project we should be able to get through it with considerably fewer than that. I don’t feel like you need much more than that to create compelling gameplay-first single-player experiences with emotional resonance and lasting power.

Getting a high-performing small team that creates games that are more than the sum of their parts–it’s a more sustainable long-term strategy as well. Collaborating with some fantastic partners of course, some outsourcing studios that are really high-quality these days. You can make these focused sprints, push the quality and push it over the finish line, while maintaining a fairly agile internal studio culture. You can keep your burn rate as low as possible as well. Trying to be responsibly ambitious is how we’d like to frame that internally.

GamesBeat: What was the process of raising money and finding partners like?

Krueger: For my entire career I’ve just been in the developer’s chair. I’ve been deep in the trenches, focused intently on gameplay loops, on the stuff we did at Housemarque. In recent years I was in the role of creative director there. That’s where there are some transferable skills, I think, when it comes to communicating the vision of the project to the internal team versus prospective investors or partners that would want to join you.

But in terms of fundraising, setting up a new studio, the operations side, this is my first rodeo. And I want this to be my last rodeo as well. I’m thinking long term for the studio. I’m an entrepreneur out of necessity, in a way. There was no other studio doing the type of games I wanted to make with the approach that I’ve been thinking about. It felt like the right time to adopt a new challenge for myself. It’s been a pretty interesting roller coaster these last couple of years. I’m relieved and happy and grateful that we have something to show for it already in the studio, and some good wind in our sails.

Returnal was one of the big award winners of 2021. GamesBeat: Did it feel good to maybe wait this long, to a point where your reputation and experience meant partners might find you?

Krueger: I’ve been fortunate all these years to build a strong network of really close friends, colleagues, peers in the industry. They’ve been incredibly supportive in these stages. The moment I left Housemarque and I was on my own for the first time, I got incredible support from so many people in the industry that wanted to see what I’d be doing next, and also offered to help. I couldn’t have gotten this far without their support, their encouragement, and the inspiration they brought.

It’s a bit of cliche, but in many cases it really is about the friends we make along the way. There’s something invaluable about having the right people in your corner.

GamesBeat: What was behind the decision to leave? How is this something you couldn’t do inside an established studio like Housemarque?

Krueger: After 15 years in a single company, it just felt like time for a change, to be honest. I was ready for a new type of challenge, I’d say. It’s interesting to reflect on the journey that I had there at Housemarque. When I first joined the studio, it was just over 20 people working on two games. When I left it was more than 110 people, roughly – over 100, let’s say – working on a single game. Plus outsourcing and other partners and so on. It’s almost an order of magnitude bigger in terms of ambition, scope, and complexity.

Maybe a part of me just missed a slightly smaller, slightly more focused team size, where things are a bit more agile, more adaptive. There’s perhaps even different pressures, I guess, different expectations associated with that size as well. I was just at the Saros launch party yesterday, actually. I think you know some of the guys there. We’re still close friends, on really good times. I’m incredibly grateful for the time that I had there. It’s been great to see so much overwhelming support and positivity for this new venture we’re starting.

GamesBeat: Are there things about the industry that you’re worried about at this point?

Krueger: It’s always a bit of a mixture. The ability to adapt is much more important than the ability to plan. No matter what expectations we have, or what outlook we have, very likely things aren’t going to turn out exactly how we expect them, and we’ll be challenged to adapt to whatever happens in the future. I do feel optimistic about the trajectory of the industry. I think there’s a shared sentiment that certain team sizes, maybe certain practices when it comes to game development are proving to be unsustainable. I suspect that more studios will adopt a bit more of this lean and mean, lightweight, fairly small and manageable size, while leveraging high-quality partnerships.

It feels like the industry is healing. A lot of things happened in the last five or six years since COVID. There’s generally an aura of optimism around a lot of people I’ve spoken to about where we’re headed. It seems like on the funding side there is more movement now as well. More of an appetite to slowly branch out again, maybe with renewed optimism, renewed caution, and hopefully some wisdom as well.

GamesBeat: Do you have any strong opinions about AI tools and how they can be helpful yet?

Krueger: It’s an interesting and very polarizing topic, clearly. As is often the case, you get the extreme camps. On the one side you have people that don’t want to touch it at all. I think that’s where you might be missing on some opportunities to improve certain workflows, pipelines, and so on. And on the other extreme you have the camp that says it’s going to solve all of their problems. They’re likely going to be very disappointed.

We’re maintaining an open mind right now. We’re monitoring the space. We’re open to adopting AI in ways that make sense for development. But it’s also a bit too early to have a firm stance on how that integration will work for our processes.

GamesBeat: What do you think about gamers and their reactions to trends like these? Especially in the west, there’s been a lot of negative reaction to trends that have had a lot of hype behind them. It’s AI now. It was blockchain and metaverse and VR before. They seem to reject these trends before the games they influenced were even ready.

Krueger: Once a new trend arrives and it starts making headlines, usually things get blown out of proportion one way or another. Things get misinterpreted. Expectations get skewed. That’s usually where disappointment comes from as well. There’s a lot of discussion going on about, for example, AI and other trends. There are some truths there. There’s a lot of bloat and a lot of hype. In general it’s good to remain level-headed about these things and see what’s standing after all the dust settles.

You’re going to get extreme examples of some games or projects doubling down, tripling down on some latest trend. Some of them might succeed. Some might fail catastrophically. Others might take a more measured approach, a more discreet approach to integrating certain things. Hopefully for the better. It’s impossible to please everyone in the end.

GamesBeat: What’s a good way to have conversations with investors who might be very interested in these trends, more so than pure gameplay?

Overdrive shots fire a steady stream of electric death in PlayStation 4 launch exclusive Resogun. Krueger: I confess, that has been one challenge, perhaps, for us. I do understand that when it comes to the investment perspective, you’re tuned in to the latest trends, the latest features and ideas that might maximize your investment. Get you 10X or 100X what you’re putting in. Even for those studios that tick all the boxes, whether it’s AI or multiplayer or mobile games, games as a service, blockchain, whatever, even a lot of those studios have apparently had a lot of trouble with fundraising.

For us, coming at it from the angle of, “Hey, we just want to make a great video game,” it’s been a bit more challenging, in a way, to entice investors around how lucrative that kind of prospect can be. As I mentioned before, I do see the lasting power of single-player games, for example. They’re here to stay. They will always be relevant. We’re always actively looking for the right partners, for partners who believe in the same things we do. It can be a mutually beneficial relationship. We can help each other make the best possible game together. That’s the ideal scenario.

GamesBeat: It’s more about finding folks who already trust your reputation for finding the fun.

Krueger: I would say so. That’s a part of it, sure. But it’s also about finding new, fresh angles and seeing where we can take our established pedigree and reputation and formula. For me it’s not just about recycling what I’ve done in the past and giving it a new coat of paint. It’s about being ambitious. It’s about exploring new horizons. But doing so with a measured and responsible approach. At this point, for us to deviate too much from our strengths, sure, that could present a new opportunity, but it also presents a considerable risk.

GamesBeat: Are there some games you’ve played that helped inspire you to go in a certain direction right now? Whether from your own past or from other companies.

Krueger: It’s been a bit of a blur. The new Resident Evil, Requiem, was absolutely immaculate. It was an incredible experience. Obviously I’ve been playing Saros a bit now. I’m a bit biased, but I think it’s an incredible game. Of course Expedition 33 has been another great reference point for what you can achieve with a small, high-performing team with a crystal clear vision. Astro Bot is a bit older now, but that’s another amazing game. There have been quite a few really inspiring single-player experiences in recent years that have helped solidify or strengthen our resolve, in a way, our confidence that this is a viable direction for us.

GamesBeat: Those have definitely found a following among hardcore gamers. Is there anything you think is appealing to newer gamers, or a broader market, that’s also part of what you’re trying to do?

Krueger: Appealing to a broader market is an interesting question and an interesting challenge. One of my favorite games, or genres I guess–it’s From Software. I remember when Demon’s Souls came out for the PS3. I was so blown away by that game. I think I bought three or four copies and just gave them to friends. At the time I was saying, “This game is going to change everything.” It was a breath of fresh air to bring back those timeless gameplay values – high challenge, an intoxicating gameplay loop. Being unapologetic about what it wants to be, as well.

What started back then–it seemed like it would just be a niche of ultra-hardcore gameplay experiences. Now of course, iterating the way they have, they’ve reached the point of Elden Ring, which is an incredible success. It shows once again that there’s a much larger market for these kinds of experiences than perhaps we think there is. I think it goes beyond just the difficulty. The difficulty is just part of the gameplay. It does make the gameplay loop perhaps more addictive and more rewarding. It feels worth it because there’s such beautiful art direction and story. The overall experience is just so compelling. The bosses have that tragic beauty. But it’s all of those elements. It’s not just a game that has difficulty as its defining factor. It’s significantly more than that.

I don’t know what the secret formula is, but we’re going to try our own take on that with the next game.

GamesBeat: What would be your advice for veteran game developers, but also for brand-new developers at this point in time?

Krueger: It’s always hard, but try not to bite off more than you can chew. It’s much better to develop something that’s focused, even if it’s not your magnum opus. Something that’s focused, something that’s doable. Embrace iteration as part of the process, even from project to project. That’s why I didn’t want–even if I was given the opportunity, I wouldn’t want to make a first game with 200 people. Make a grandiose epic adventure. The risk far outweighs the possible upsides. Especially for a new studio that can easily be crushed under the weight of that ambition.

It’s very different when you have an established team. You have momentum. You’ve identified your core competencies and strengths. Then it’s a lot easier to just focus only on the game itself, which is already more than a full-time job. When you’re also building a studio, there’s a lot of uncertainties, a lot of X factors, a lot of things that are out of our control. Sometimes it’s just timing, or even luck in some cases. We need to be responsible in anticipating and adapting to those.

GamesBeat: At the same time, how do you be ambitious in the right way, to stand out from 20,000 Steam games coming out every year?

Krueger: Innovation can come in many different forms. Having a unique identity can also come in different forms as well. It’s about identifying the core pillars, the core use case of the experience, if you want to frame it that way. Making sure that those key pillars are polished to perfection. And accept that not every single component needs to be at a quadruple-A level of polish and ambition. Again, being responsibly ambitious is a good way to frame it. Trying to find that sweet spot where you build on your strengths, and you also have that X factor to differentiate yourself.

I like to think in terms of the 80/20. That’s my favorite kind of divide. Going with the familiar is 80%, building on your strengths, doing something really extraordinarily well, and 20% is keeping an open mind for a new voice, a new X factor, new things that can help you stand out from the crowd and find that unique, razor-sharp edge for your vision as well.

We’re a gameplay-first studio. For us that means it’s all about finding the core gameplay loops. The second-to-second needs to carry the hour-to-hour. Some of that stuff you plan out on paper and it turns out how you imagined it, so you just build on it. Other times that can be the role of creativity and experimentation and iteration that allows you to find those unique components of the experience and build on them. We try to have a singular, really focused vision of what type of experience we want to create, but that’s just defining the creative box, the boundaries and constraints of the experience. Within those constraints we want to have unbridled creativity. Try to find our own, let’s say, local micro-innovations or twists on certain familiar formulas.

In the end it’s just about iteration. It takes a lot of effort for something to feel effortless. Through that approach you can end up with something that’s much more than the sum of its parts. Quality never comes from ideas. It comes from commitment and execution of those ideas. Craftsmanship.

GamesBeat: Are you still in Finland?

Krueger: Yes, the studio is based in Helsinki, downtown Helsinki actually. I’ve been here for so long now. I have my family and kids here. And of course there’s a lot of fantastic talent here. I have a lot of friends in the industry. There’s a thriving game development community in Finland that’s incredibly supportive. It’s a great place to be for a new studio. For such a small country, you could say it’s punching above its weight in some ways. That’s why it’s on brand for us to be making a studio that aims to do the same.

GamesBeat: Was the name inspired by anything in particular?

Krueger: Cosmic Division, the way that I’ve imagined it is that we’re a division that explores the otherworldly. It just felt on brand. I’m a big fan of cosmic horror, unsurprisingly so. That’s why it’s incorporated in the logo, with the tentacle and the star. It’s a division that will be exploring all flavors of cosmic wonder through our gameplay-first experiences.

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