It took longer to buy back the Journey to the Savage Planet IP and source code from Google than it did to sell Typhoon Studios to it. “Because Google’s used to buying stuff, but they are not used to giving it back,” Reid Schneider, co-founder and studio head of Racoon Logic, tells me on a visit to their Montréal office for a hands-off preview of Revenge of the Savage Planet, a sort-of sequel to Journey to the Savage Planet.
I’m anecdotally told by Schneider and other Racoon Logic employees that Google wasn’t used to a lot of how game development worked. “The core of it is: don’t work with companies whose primary business is not making games, if you would like to make games,” Alex Hutchinson, Racoon Logic co-founder and creative director, summarises. “[Google] didn’t like how game development tasted,” Schneider later adds.
The reason why new studio Racoon Logic knows so much about working with Google is that it was co-founded by, and hired, many employees who worked at Typhoon Studios, the developers of Journey to the Savage Planet. “The first, last, and only game Google ever paid for internally,” Hutchinson laughs, as he and Schneider explain Typhoon’s troubled history with Google.
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