The Undivided

A superstar team of former Ubisoft developers is building something big

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You’ve heard the tale countless times: of a band of veteran developers tiring of the big-budget, mega-publisher grind and deciding to strike out on their own. Yet rarely does the resulting startup come with quite the pedigree of Sharkmob. This is a supergroup, comprising much of the senior team that made Tom Clancy’s The Division at Ubisoft Massive – its executive producer and creative director, its head of comms, the engineer who spearheaded the making of the Snowdrop engine and the art director who brought it to life, among others.

This was no mass walkout, we’re told – rather, CEO Fredrik Rundqvist felt it was time for a change, and his former colleagues joined up one by one. Again, it’s a common story: with work on The Division complete and thoughts turning to the now confirmed sequel, Rundqvist saw himself staring down the barrel of another long project – and one which, as executive producer, he didn’t feel he had enough creative involvement in.

“If you work on a game with hundreds of people,” he tells us, “you are no longer making a game on a daily basis; you are managing other people who are making a game. I think that was one of the biggest motivators for me, to actually make a game again, and be part of all those wonderful meetings, processes and decisions. If you’re in a very high position you can never convey a true sense of ownership, or control, or influence. You can only try to manage it.”