- Ranging from nothing continues to be doable, Zimmerman says – the barrier is consideration, not making the sport.
- Sucker Punch prototypes till one thing feels magical as soon as, then makes it occur constantly.
- Subsequent up: an indie mission, a design e book he hasn’t cracked and a studio he will not depart.
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At Pocket Gamer Connects, in addition to masking all sides of the cell video games business, our star audio system cowl all different platforms, too. Right here, as with our occasions like PGC Nordics on October twentieth and twenty first we get some insights from exterior the cell sphere.
Sucker Punch was based in October 1997 by six Microsoft alumni with no writer, no engine and no recreation. Twenty-nine years later it’s a PlayStation Studios group of round 160 individuals whose final two releases, Ghost of Tsushima and Ghost of Yōtei, are amongst Sony’s largest first-party properties.
Throughout SLICE 2026 in Seattle, the place we hosted the Huge Indie Pitch, we caught up with speaker Chris Zimmerman, co-founder and studio head emeritus at Sucker Punch.
He was was contemporary off the stage after his speak on the fashions his studio makes use of to search out what’s particular a few recreation. Our dialog lined what has genuinely closed off for brand spanking new studios, how Sucker Punch decides what to hold ahead from successful and why he retains failing to begin his second e book.
What’s really closed off in 2026
To kick off, regardless of the success of the studio, Zimmerman is fast to reject the premise that his personal path is a template.
“It is so completely different. It is laborious to attract the parallels as a result of the video games business was so completely different in 1997,” he says. “We needed to do every little thing from scratch. There have been no recreation engines. You possibly can not make a recreation with out programming abilities. You needed to get a licence from the console platform to even develop for the {hardware}.”
Nearly all of that has eased. Instruments, entry, Steam. The issue is that the identical easing applies to everybody.
“The issue is not making a recreation, it is making a recreation that really anybody notices.”
He illustrates the shift with arithmetic. When Sucker Punch began, it picked the N64 intentionally: roughly 500 PlayStation video games towards roughly 50 on Nintendo’s console.
“That was good as a result of it meant that despite the fact that we had been no one coming from nothing, after we had a recreation, it was one in all no matter, 80, 100 at that time, not one in all 500.
“However today these aren’t the numbers. The numbers are 500,000 or much more should you’re on the iOS or Google Play shops. So the issue is so completely different. The obstacles are so completely different. It is a barrier of consideration that you simply want, not making the sport.”
His counter-example is near dwelling. Jean Nguyen, a senior animator on the studio, posted a clip of a spinosaurus sword preventing with a buster sword in its mouth, which blew up across the time he was interviewing at Sucker Punch – one of many causes the group checked out him. That grew to become Dinoblade, launched on Steam in July 2026 and sitting at round 1,700 person evaluations.
“He is an animator. He would not know learn how to program. He would not know learn how to do something besides he is a extremely good animator, however he is additionally tremendous pushed and made the sport all on his personal and now it is out. It is really a hit.”
So the trail is open, in his telling, simply not the one he walked.
Discovering the spark
The core of Zimmerman’s SLICE speak, a model of which he gave at GDC, is a course of for finding the one factor a recreation is about.
“Each profitable recreation has one thing that may be very particular about it. It isn’t every little thing within the recreation, it is simply a part of it usually.”
The counterfactual is stark. “A recreation will be constantly competent, utterly skilled, nicely made throughout the board, but when there’s nothing particular, individuals will not play it. And that is a catastrophe for us.
“Our standards is 10% of all PlayStation house owners play our recreation. That is our bar. So you possibly can’t miss.”
For an open world recreation, he says, the bedrock is a powerful character fantasy – one you possibly can convey in a sentence. You get to be a cowboy within the previous west. You get to be a gang member in South Central LA. “Everybody is aware of what recreation I am speaking about.”
“Our standards is 10% of all PlayStation house owners play our recreation. That is our bar. So you possibly can’t miss.”
From there it’s prototyping till one thing works. On Tsushima, that took 10 months: six to get to what he calls a reliable however uninspired melee recreation, then 4 extra of concepts that did not land earlier than they hit the skill-based parry, the place a late block sends the attacker previous you right into a counter.
“As soon as we noticed it occur as soon as – you are like, oh, that was cool. Our expertise is that after that occurs, you may make it constant.”
The remainder is accumulation, and it runs late. He confirmed a chart within the speak plotting when every component individuals now consider as core to Tsushima’s fight really arrived.
“It is simply beautiful, as a result of we labored on the sport for 5 years, six years and necessary stuff got here up in yr 5.”
The opposite half of the speak, he provides, is just about not making silly errors.
Following a recreation individuals already cherished
Ghost of Yōtei is ready three centuries after Tsushima with a brand new protagonist. Zimmerman frames the choice by means of the identical lens as every little thing else.
“You are taking the factor that is particular and also you make it extra particular.” That meant fight – “we simply spent all of Yōtei improvement making an increasing number of the distilled essence of Tsushima fight” – and the environments.
The brand new lead was a deliberate selection quite than a compromise.
“The perfect open world video games are ones which might be origin tales, as a result of then the participant’s expertise enjoying the sport mirrors the protagonist’s expertise. Something you are able to do to convey these two issues into alignment makes the immersion stronger.”
He was candid that this could price the studio one thing.
“We knew that there have been lots of people that had been going to be actually upset that Jin wasn’t within the recreation” – a disappointment he compares to shifting previous Cole for Notorious: Second Son. The judgement was that Jin’s story had been informed and that persevering with it might depart the magic behind.
He additionally, at this level, informed us to carry the story till the next morning. On September third, at State of Play, Sucker Punch introduced Ghost of Yōtei Full Version: the Echoes of Sekigahara narrative growth and Most Needed, a single-player fight survival mode with 4 playable characters – Atsu, Oyuki, Nagato and Jin Sakai, returning with all 4 Tsushima stances. Each arrive on October 1st.
Success to success, and the half it would not cowl
Zimmerman describes his personal strategy as constructing success to success – write the factor, discover a writer, promote a thousand copies – and is evident about the place the framework stops.
“There are two halves to it. There’s the artistic strategy of constructing the sport after which there is a sensible strategy of retaining your life on monitor. And while you’re doing indie recreation dev, they’ll battle with one another.”
“Success to success helps so much with the constructing the sport facet of it, but it surely would not actually handle the sensible facet of how am I going to maintain the lights on?”
Sucker Punch’s founders skipped a few of that. “We had the luxurious of getting sufficient cash to fund the preliminary improvement of our video games.”
He doesn’t current this as replicable, nevertheless.
“Success to success helps so much with the constructing the sport facet of it, but it surely would not actually handle the sensible facet of how am I going to maintain the lights on? And that is powerful for lots of people proper now, as a result of the video games business goes by means of what it is going by means of. Hopefully we’ll flip the nook. In the meanwhile it is fairly ugly.”
He’s making use of the identical ladder to his personal pastime mission – actually titled Chris’s Interest Recreation, or Chug, and is sincere about which rung he’s on.
He has one thing he likes; different individuals have performed it and stated good issues; none of them saved enjoying. “That is form of the subsequent aim, to get to the factor the place I’ve acquired one thing that individuals are like, I need to play this some extra.”
Which is Nguyen’s route, kind of. “He was a full-time man at Sucker Punch doing nice work on Ghost of Yōtei, managed to search out 10 hours every week, made Dinoblade in his spare time. You possibly can utterly do it. It is simply laborious.”
Scale as a constraint
The flip facet of Sucker Punch’s place is that it can’t make small video games.
“Our group’s so massive, our budgets are so massive, we’ve got to promote 5 million items. In any other case it is simply not price us making the sport.”
That guidelines out the slim, targeted video games he says the group personally likes, and it caps how far any new mission can stray from what the studio already is aware of learn how to construct.
“We form of have to remain a minimum of somewhat bit near dwelling. It is form of the tyranny of success of being massive – it prices an excessive amount of cash to run the studio. We won’t be tremendous, tremendous experimental as a result of we burn money so quick.”
Transferring between franchises, then, is much less about market positioning than exhaustion.
“After 10 years of engaged on Notorious, we had been prepared for one thing new. It has been your entire life for 10 years. We felt like we would stated what we needed to say.”
He provides, extra bluntly: “We’re out of fine concepts, too.”
The e book he cannot work out learn how to write
Away from making video games, Zimmerman has written a e book, too. His first, The Guidelines of Programming, got here out in 2023. A second is the plain subsequent transfer, however he retains stalling on it.
“I used to be at peak degree of confidence that I knew issues after I was 23. Ever since then, it has been all downhill,” he says.
“There’s undoubtedly a degree of conceitedness in beginning a video games firm. There is a degree of conceitedness in beginning any artistic mission,” Zimmerman provides, highlighting the conceitedness of believing different individuals will need the factor you make.
“I make pottery only for myself. There is no conceitedness in that.”
The primary e book hit the identical wall. “I’d write a chapter after which I’d learn it again and I used to be like, who is that this man preaching at me?”
He shelved it, then solved it structurally: construct each chapter round concrete examples, put a number of supply code in. “I wasn’t simply saying issues with no basis. As soon as I had that sample, then I may write the e book fairly fast.”
A recreation design e book has no equal grounding mechanism, and he has not discovered one. “I can write a e book that is identical to, do that, try this. However after I learn a chapter I’ve written, I am like, I do not know whether or not I consider this man.”
Requested what comes subsequent, he lists the indie mission, the e book and – unprompted – his golf recreation, which isn’t enhancing a lot as being performed extra usually. However the part-time association isn’t a step in direction of the exit.
“Along with my facet initiatives, I like working with my associates at Sucker Punch and might’t think about giving that up,” he says. “It is fairly intoxicating to work with a bunch of such proficient, pushed and pleasant individuals.”
When requested whether or not he may write about beginning an organization as an alternative, Zimmerman waved it off: every little thing he has to say on that, he reckons, is stuff no one desires to listen to.
He ends with a compromise: “Flip off your recorder and I will let you know what my issues are.”
Be taught extra about studio-building, massive display screen gaming and indie routes to market at our Pocket Gamer Connects conferences all over the world. The subsequent massive present shall be PGC Nordics in Helsinki on October twentieth and twenty first.
