14 DAY TRIAL // In a recent interview, Sefton Hill, the head of Rocksteady and , said that the studio had not reached its creative peak with Batman: Arkham Asylum and the future projects will be even better. He also commented that his outfit was now very confident and keen to take their next games in bold directions.
Speaking with Develop, Sefton Hill, who also serves as a game director for the recently announced Batman: Arkham City, declared that Rocksteady had grown very self-confident with the development of their first title, but that was not to be confused with arrogance.
“As we were designing Arkham, our confidence as a studio had begun to grow,” he said. “After the release it grew even further. Now I’m really excited, because, as a developer, I look at our team and I don’t think the studio has hit its peak. I still think we have places to go.
“I’ve seen us grow as a company – and I mean in terms of confidence and ability – and I genuinely can see us grow further still. I don’t think Arkham Asylum is going to be the best game we make. We’re growing and developing as a company all the time.”
This was very good the gamers because, according to Hill, a studio that believes in itself takes more risks and brings more innovation to the industry.
This can lead to arrogance, but as the studio is not one person, but a company that is comprised of multiple and very different personalities, it can be avoided in the developer's opinion.
“Sometimes you have wild ideas and sometimes we just can’t have them in there,” he said.
“If there’s too much arrogance you can push through bad ideas. It tends to be the quieter people [at a studio] who have something really important to say when a big decision is about to be made.”
He continued to comment that, “So you need to be arrogant and humble as a studio… obviously, you can’t expect both those qualities in one person [laughs], but that should be the make-up of the studio – daring creatives that have great, innovative ideas, as well as those who can spot mistakes and aren’t afraid to cite them.
“That’s what I’m delighted with regarding our studio; we have that right mix,” he explained
Batman: Arkham City is set to be released in the fall of 2011 and revolves around the caped crusader's adventures in a sealed-off district of Gotham that acts as an open prison for the city's most dangerous criminals.