Tom Stone, former managing director at TT Games, the studio behind every major LEGO game (including the upcoming LEGO Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight), has left his most recent position as chair of FuturLab (the Powerwash Simulator studio) to open Second Star Games. Stone and his new studio is going back to what he did with TT Games for nearly two decades; not making LEGO games, of course, but making games based on licensed IP, starting with Neverland and the adventures of Peter Pan.
This all comes from a new interview with Stone on GamesIndustry.Biz, where he discusses his tenure at TT Games and the reports of crunch that went on at the studio for years, all of which came to a head with LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, and the attitude with which Stone and his 17 other studio members at Second Star Games approach their work now.
“I think we’re going to take a breath and look up occasionally. When we were making the LEGO games, it was intense. It was blood, sweat and tears. I loved every single moment of it, but upon reflection, we could have made fewer games slightly better and sold probably the same number of units that we sold.”
“It was a pretty tough 15, 16, 17 years we had at TT. We were on a mission. We were focused. We achieved incredible things. Everything in life is a trade; people worked incredibly hard and the games were phenomenally successful. I don’t think everyone complained that it was a tough culture. As happens, there were a number of people who justifiably and rightly said it was a tough environment; their voices were louder than the people who were saying they enjoyed working there and loved making LEGO games. Their voices weren’t heard so much.”
Stone doesn’t comment too much on what the studio will be working on, but does confirm what the studio’s name already gives away, that they’ll begin by making games based on Neverland and Peter Pan, but that’s not all Stone wants his new team to do. Eventually, he wants the studio to have the same breadth of licensed titles that TT Games has.
“The first is Neverland and the adventures of Peter Pan. Once we announced the studio, we actually had quite a lot of inbound interest, asking whether we’d be interested in working on this IP or that piece of IP. Obviously, we will be selective and thoughtful. We have to be mindful that we can’t do it all at the same time, but the goal is to build out a stable of expertise in this young gamer space.”
“Peter Pan is the fire that everyone is watching, while they all gather around the television together. The vision is to build a stable, bring the thoroughbreds in, and have everyone playing together around a screen.”
It’ll be interesting to see what Stone and his new team bring to the table with Neverland and Peter Pan-based games, and whether they’ll sway closer to the kind of puzzle-platforming adventures that he used to make at TT Games, or if they’ll be something entirely new. A few key members of Second Star Games are former TT Games staff who Stone says are all like-minded and on the same page about how they work together.
“We’re currently a team of 18 full-time employees. Everyone’s the same. We’re all in this boat together. Everyone knows each other. We don’t want an HR department. Everyone is there to support one another in building this game together. It’s going to be tough and challenging because we’re setting ourselves incredibly high goals. We had a meeting last week in the studio, where we agreed on a particular design feature, which is going to be very, very challenging to achieve.”
“If we are not going to do stuff like that, what’s the point of doing it? If we aren’t going to break through and make this game truly memorable, then why bother? Everyone is on board. Everyone knows we are going to set ourselves some really, really high bar challenges, and everyone wants to do it.”