“After we got done with Destiny 1,” says former Bungie CEO Harold Ryan, “I wanted to try to have a bigger impact on the industry.”
It’s difficult to think of what, exactly, he could have done to make a bigger impact, given that Destiny helped to pioneer the games-as-a-service (GaaS) format that subsequently swept through the industry. But the aim of ProbablyMonsters, the firm he founded in 2016 after leaving Bungie, was to transform how AAA video games were made.
“I believed that game developers deserve more predictability, more respect in the workplace,” says Ryan. “The way, it seemed, to do that was to build teams and games to sign with major publishers. And we did that. We did that successfully for a while. And that’s not the model that I think works today, and we’ve had to evolve.”
Now, as ProbablyMonsters reveals its first two games since the studio’s founding nine years ago, it’s clear a lot has changed in that time. A lot.
Scattergun approach
For a start, all ambitions to target the AAA market have been abandoned. Perhaps this is unsurprising given the fate of the studio that ProbablyMonsters span off two years ago. Firewalk Studios was bought by Sony in 2023, only to be unceremoniously shuttered following the calamitous failure of its debut game Concord in 2024.
A sign, perhaps, that the old ways of doing things don’t work anymore, in an age of entrenched free-to-play blockbusters, spiralling development budgets, and flatlining market growth.
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“The market evolved – and we had to step back and figure out how to evolve,” says Ryan. Now, instead of transforming AAA development, ProbablyMonsters is adopting a model more akin to the AA publishers of the 2000s. A scattergun approach, you could say, throwing out relatively small and quick-to-make games, then seeing which ones stick.
“We have multiple short-, mid-, and long-term games in development in the company,” Ryan says. “We’ll be shipping games every year from here on forward, with multiple different genres.”
The first two games to be announced are Storm Lancers, an 1980s-anime-inspired action rogue-like for Nintendo Switch, and Ire: A Prologue, a single-player psychological horror game for Steam and Epic Games Store. Both were made in around 18 months, both are due out later this year, and both are priced at $19.99.
Storm Lancers’ headline feature is couch co-op – reminiscent of a long-established Halo tradition. Then again, there’s no shortage of action rogue-likes in the world, we suggest, not least Hades and its sequel.
But Ryan is confident that Storm Lancers – which has been developed by Jim Veevaert (formerly of Microsoft) and Seth Thompson (formerly of Blizzard) – can stand out against the competition as a result of its vibrant eighties art style and “top tier” audio, as well as that treasured co-op mode. “While Hades is certainly a game we look at, if you put the two side by side, they’re clearly distinct experiences.”
Ire: A Prologue, meanwhile, is a completely different kettle of fish – a dark, moody, 10-hour-or-so-long game centred around a mystery on a spooky ship in the Bermuda Triangle. It’s being developed by Bungie alumni Matt Case and CJ Cowan.
“We really hope it’s the first step in a franchise,” says Ryan. “We’re treating this first game like a pilot episode, looking to put it in consumers’ hands and see what they like.”
“We’re treating this first game like a pilot episode, looking to put it in consumers’ hands and see what they like.”
Harold Ryan, ProbablyMonsters
And there’s more to come beyond these two titles. “We’re still building an open-world RPG, that’s a long-term investment,” says Ryan. “We’ve got a co-op souls rogue-like in development. We’ve got an extraction game in development that we’re really excited about.”
It’s quite the spread of genres and platforms. But that fits with a market that has fractured. Better this than pinning everything on one big release in the hope of making all your money back.
“I think it’s about sizing the investment to the audience in order to be sustainable,” says Ryan. “I don’t think the answer is only one size fits all.”
Goodbye studios, hello integration
ProbablyMonsters’ pivot has come at a cost. Reports came in recently of waves of redundancies at its internal studios, which included Cauldron, Battle Barge, and Hidden Grove, the last of which was only unveiled in April 2024. Ryan confirms that these studios are no more.
“Those were all studios that we built in our old model. And they are teams we have shut down at this point.”
“A portion of those teams are working on two of the games that are coming out this fall, and also on the other mid- and long-term games that we are working on. And in our cycle, pushing for sustainability, we’ve already greenlit two more short-term projects for next fall, in addition to our other mid- and long-term projects that are in development.”
“So we’re doing our best to create as many opportunities to bring meaningful games to market as we can. But as with the rest of the industry, we’re learning and evolving as the market moves, and moving with it.”
Ryan says that today, ProbablyMonsters consists of around 200 full-time employees, compared with around 400 at the point just before Sony bought Firewalk. Previously, the company was arranged as a hub and spoke model, he says, where each game studio was set up so that it could operate as an independent entity, but drawing on central facilities and technology when necessary.
Today, the teams are much smaller. “They’re much more integrated with each other and with the central teams. So we have more engineering production support as central resources that help teams through milestones or phases of development than we did before.”
“But we’re still very much focused around having industry-leading creative humans that are the anchor points for building the focused game experience each game represents.”
Agility and flexibility is the key to the new arrangement, he says.”If there’s a north star for the structure, it’s [that] there isn’t a single right way to get a game into players hands.”
“If there’s a north star for the structure, it’s [that] there isn’t a single right way to get a game into players hands.”
Harold Ryan, ProbablyMonsters
The teams’ integrated nature means people are able to share tools and technology, and potentially move from one game to another. Every project is evaluated individually and scoped accordingly. “We’re finding the right size team, the right timeline, the right partners, even the right audience for it.”
“It’s about being responsible with the level of investment for the audience, the platform you bring the game to, but then it’s also acknowledging that in two years from now, what genre is going to be the most popular? I don’t know… It changes so fast.”
Keeping up means making games more quickly and with a tighter focus – much like how it was done in the old days. “I shipped five Halo games in 10 years,” Ryan points out. “And I think when you manage the business with the goal of sustaining it, you can pick an audience and build a $19 game for that audience, and really be setting up your teams for sustainable success.”
“Part of the short-term game development cycle is really looking at, hey, there’s an audience need, what can we build with the tools and the partners and technology we understand today and deliver a game in a visible timeframe? And I think that’s an important part of us evolving.”
“Our vision is still the same, our goals are the same. [But] we’ve stumbled a bit. We have some things to learn.”
Big changes
Is the vision really the same, though? Surely ProbablyMonsters’ new approach is the polar opposite of its founding purpose, which, as Ryan’s LinkedIn page states, was “building the next generation of AAA game development studios”.
“Yeah, I mean, I would agree and clarify that I think the real vision of the company… Signing triple-A games to publishers really was a means to an end of securing what I believe was a reliable, predictable path for securing funding for games. And today it’s not. And so the goal is still to get to the point where we can have long lasting, respectful careers for game developers, and I think the whole industry is trying to find the right path there.”
“You know, I’ve read through your article on [Develop] Brighton,” he continues. “I think a lot of what they’re talking about in Brighton is the same thing you’re hearing at GDC, and DICE, and all the other shows as well. The old way isn’t working well, it’s not working well for many of us. And I think it’s on all of us as people who have the potential to influence to help people find a path that works.”
If there’s one indication of how drastically things have changed over the past few years, it’s remembering that ProbablyMonsters was able to raise the princely sum of $250 million in investment in 2022, at the height of the COVID-era mania for throwing money at video games.
Like everyone else in the industry, ProbablyMonsters has found money a bit harder to come by since then. But it’s not make or break time just yet, says Ryan. “I think we’re in a good place.”
“We’ve restructured, we’ve picked a new path, right? We still have the same goal, but we’ve evolved with the industry, and we have two games to ship, which means we’re not just saying, ‘Oh, we have a different strategy, we think it might work’. We’re like, ‘We have a new strategy, and it’s working, and here’s the first two games that are coming out from that strategy’.”
Goodbye GaaS
Perhaps one of the most interesting parts of ProbablyMonsters’ change of tack is how a company that was founded by someone who could almost be regarded as the father of GaaS has seemingly left that model behind – with good reason, one would imagine, given the fate of its progeny Firewalk.
“I think that model is appropriate for some games, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for all games,” clarifies Ryan. “And I believe consumers are telling us it’s not appropriate for all consumers.”
“Would I ever make another service-based game? Sure. If I see the right game idea and the right audience, am I happy to build that and bring that to market? I am. But I think [for] sustainable careers, I think for the industry, it’s pretty clear that we can’t just pick a business model and say that’s a reason to make a game.”
“You want to pick a player experience and then build the game that delivers that experience to the audience where they’re at, the way they want to consume, on the platform they want to play it on.”
Harold Ryan, ProbablyMonsters
“You want to pick a player experience and then build the game that delivers that experience to the audience where they’re at, the way they want to consume, on the platform they want to play it on. Sometimes that’ll be games as a service. And this fall, I really hope that’s on the Switch and on the PC for the two games we’re bringing out.”
The main problem is that people don’t ever seem to want to stop playing those behemoth live-service games that have been dominating the market for years, like Fortnite, League of Legends, and even Ryan’s old game, Destiny (or rather Destiny 2).
“I still have many dear friends there,” says Ryan of his former company, Bungie. “And absolutely, it’s a part of me.”
“I celebrate their successes, and I feel their struggles and I think in some ways, when I look at it, it feels like they’re in the very same place that almost everyone in the industry is, where the things that were working and reliable before aren’t quite as reliable.”
“Everyone can’t be the number one most successful game in the industry,” he muses. “But I think we all could be shipping successful games.”
That success involves achieving true sustainability. “What I see for our teams, and I hope everyone can find, is a sustainable business model where everyone has the opportunity to ship games that delight their audience and are profitable, that pay the bills.”
“That’s what we all need.”
