Please support Game Informer. Print magazine subscriptions are less than $2 per issue
Payday 2’s David Goldfarb: ‘I’m Abandoning AAA’
David Goldfarb, lead designer on Overkill’s Payday 2, is striking out on his own. He announced this morning that he’s leaving the studio to form his own team.
Goldfarb spoke to Polygon about his reasons for branching out on his own after 15 years of work that includes Battlefield 3 and Mirror’s Edge at DICE. “I knew that at some point the thing that I always wanted was to make my own thing,” Goldfarb told Polygon. “It doesn't matter who I work with: the desire was never to make other people's games, no matter how good they are.”
Payday 2 earned a big fan base and has received a significant amount of post-launch support on PC (consoles are starting to get that now). The game will be coming out on new-gen consoles, also. Despite that success, Goldfarb wants to find new ways of working with existing genres on his own. “I’m abandoning AAA,” he says.
Goldfarb has four key team members in place already, but isn’t specifying what his new studio will work on first (though an RPG might be in the cards because of his personal affection for the genre). Whatever it ends up being, expect it to break some of the industry norms and challenge preconceptions.
For more, read the complete interview at Polygon. For more on Payday 2, check out our review.
[Source: Polygon]
Our Take
While I didn’t have the ideal experience with Payday 2 (though I’d be willing to try again with friends), I respect what the game tries to accomplish. Goldfarb has a great deal of talent, and I’m eager to see what he works on next (especially since it won’t be a MOBA with pixel and/or comic-styled art).
I’d like to ask you to support Game Informer’s continued coverage of games with a subscription. For less than two dollars per issue, we mail you a full year of 10 print magazines, each with cover stories and preview features filled with exclusive details about the most exciting upcoming games. We profile and interview game creators. We look back on the rich history of gaming, and we celebrate what’s next.
Here on the website, we offer much of our content for free, including game reviews, daily news, videos, event coverage, and more – all with minimal ads.
We do so with a small editorial team, alongside contributing paid writers from around the world – over 65 individuals from 9 countries around the world, just in the last couple of years.
It’s not possible without support.
In a time when game makers and games coverage have faced hard struggles and layoffs, the future of this 30+ year magazine and community is at risk. Our new standalone magazine subscription is the number one way you can keep us alive – and we believe you’ll get a pretty fantastic gaming magazine in your mailbox every few weeks for your trouble.
Thank you.
