His departure from Overkill was apparently on friendly term, and he believes the studio to be excellently positioned to continue succeeding. Prior to joining Overkill in 2012, Goldfarb spent over a decade in various AAA studios, working on titles such as Mirror’s Edge and Battlefield 3. In his pre-industry life Goldfarb was a poet and writer, and after 15 years of working on other people’s projects he hopes to regain some of that creative autonomy in a way that would be impossible working for mainstream publishers.
“I worked my away into the industry against all odds and once I had gotten there I realised I wasn’t really happy doing it and the stuff I was really good at was really hard to quantify. Especially in these big industries where their vested interest is really not maximizing who you are as a person or as an artist even. Companies make you less than you are the bigger they are. That’s just a rule. They’re not evil, that’s just how they are, it’s like a physics lesson.”
Goldfarb offered few specifics of what his team of four developers has been up to so far, but he was quite clear that he intends to avoid well-trodden paths and find genres that he can “subvert.”
“No MOBAs, no comic book styled art, no pixel art. Like, those are things I will not do. And there’s nothing wrong with those things, those things are all awesome, I just don’t want to do any of them.”
The one positive hint of what he might be working on came with: “I love role-playing games so I will probably make one.”
The AAA developer striking out into the indie wilderness to fulfill his creative dreams has become a common trope these days, and one that I’m always happy to see. Goldfarb is a thoughtful developer with a proven track record for solid games, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on what he comes up with in the coming months.
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