World Makers is ready to launch its Deceit 2 social deception game for PlayStation5 and XBox on 3 April, following the successful PC launch on 14 March.
The game developer was formed in 2020 by a team of multiplayer games veterans who had previously worked together on multiple projects.
The company’s CEO and co-founder, James Thompson, and chief of staff Matthew Partridge, speaking at The Bradfield Centre, where World Makers is based with a team of 15, talked through the rapid ascent in profile the company has made in virtual stealth mode.
James studied computer science at Cambridge. Still in his early 30s, he’s already something of a veteran of the video games industry, having had a spell at Jagex and also at Automaton, the developer behind Deceit.
“I was a software developer from a young age,” James says, “and I always wanted to get into the games market – I made the tools, rather than as a player. World Makers started in 2020, backed by VC engagement – $7million, that’s up to a Series A, so far.”
The early access version of Deceit 2 was a success. “We were collecting feedback and impressions from the pilot,” James notes.
The original plan to launch the game as a paid-for product has been superseded following the conclusion of the beta-testing.
“The base game is free now,” James says, “and players buy DLC – downloadable content, that’s extra assets, characters and monsters, to play the game. It’s a social deduction game, so you don’t know who the bad guy is. It’s a party game that’s been around for years in China – Deceit just combines it with an immersive horror experience.”
Matthew was at Jagex for 10 years “then detoured with Amazon, working on the Alexa and Echo in the US, Japan and Europe” before joining World Makers “almost exactly a year ago”.
“Up to now we’ve been selling on Steam and for the PC,” he says, “and now we’ve translated into consoles. The game has definitely changed – it’s a lot easier.”
World Makers has a more below-the-radar project on the go too – a “big-scale action game” called Neo.
The plan is to introduce the game with new technology which, Matthew says, will mean “more players in one game than ever before, involving 10,000 players in one game where currently RuneScape has up to 2,000 players per game”.
Watch this space for more on Neo in the summer.
