So with Mojang, there was an approach taken that we like to call minimal integration, where we looked at the stuff we really needed to have fully integrated: and that’s like IT stuff and security policy, that kind of stuff. “One day you’re of this studio, the next day you’re fully Microsoft. “Before, it was: you’re a part of Microsoft,” McGuane says. That effort was steered by Matt Booty, who pushed for a very different integration approach. As she tells it, Xbox’s shift started not in 2018, but way back in 2014, with its acquisition of Mojang. In 2018, she was serving as the chief of staff for Xbox Game Studios, giving her a front row seat to its acquisition drive. That experience has allowed her to watch this transformation take place firsthand. McGuane is currently the studio general manager at Xbox Game Studios for Obsidian, Double Fine, and inXile, but she’s held a number of roles in her over 20 years at Microsoft. Urquhart’s outside impressions were astute: he was getting a firsthand look at a transformation going on within Xbox that, per Mary McGuane, had been going on for much, much longer than the public has been privy to. The three of them together convinced Urquhart that he would be bringing Obsidian into a “new Microsoft” of sorts: one worth putting faith in. But now knowing him, and even what I knew him back then, his reputation was just someone who was authentic and someone who doesn't BS and loves games. I don't want to say ‘persona’ in the end, because he is Phil Spencer and because he runs all Microsoft games. “But what's so interesting with Phil is he is this- I don't know. “I didn't know Phil Spencer well at that time, I probably only talked to him once or twice up to that point,” he says. reputation was just someone who was authentic and someone who doesn't BS and loves games. Why would anyone trust that an enormous corporate parent like Microsoft would adhere to that one, two, five, or ten years down the road, especially in an industry where smaller companies are gobbled up daily? But Urquhart says the second component that convinced him was the people pitching him: he already knew Matt Booty well, and Musler too – enough to have faith in their promises. The first was the substance of what Xbox was pitching: it wanted to let its acquired studios “be who they are” and retain their creative freedom and studio culture, largely unbothered by Xbox mandates.Ĭreative independence following acquisition can sound like a tall, unbelievable order, though. But what ultimately sold him on the idea were two things. With a history like that and no financial need for a parent, why get acquired at all?Īccording to Urquhart, acquisition by a giant like Microsoft was a leap of faith. Obsidian was founded soon after, and went on to enjoy 15 years of independent success with games like Pillars of Eternity, Neverwinter Nights, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 2, and Fallout: New Vegas. Black Isle’s 2003 closure came as a result of financial trouble at parent company Interplay. Obsidian was born from the ashes of Black Isle Studios, which gained fame through games like Icewind Dale, Baldur’s Gate, the first two Fallout titles, and Planetscape: Torment.
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