In mid-2018, Microsoft acquired Québec-based studio Compulsion Games, who at that point had only released 2013's Contrast and a trailer for an upcoming title, We Happy Few. When We Happy Few was released later that year, Compuls൩ion Games was officially under the Microsoft banner. Now, a little over a year after that, some members of the Compulsion Games team about their time working for a company owned by Microsoft, and generally had positive things to say about the tech giant's willingness to let them experiment and make weird games.
The new interviews come courtesy of a 40 minute documentary titled released to the official Gearbox YouTube channel on December 19th. Gearbox, who are known for developing the Borderlands games among others, published We Happy Few, which Compulsion producer Sam Abbott discusses in the documentary. Abbott expl🌜ains that the initial decision by Microsoft to acquire them as a first-party studio was surprising, but it was the company's working relationship with Gearbox that acteꦿd as a signpost of sorts for how they could successfully operate as a subsidiary of Microsoft.
Compulsion's creative director and founder, Guillaume Provost, states directly that Microsoft has essentially given the company the go-ahead to execute the ideꦑas in which its developers are most interested. This green light from Microsoft, he explains, allows their team to focus more fully on bringing their ideas to life than on their next paycheck and making sure that the things they create get them paid.
In fact, Microsoft's o𒈔f its acquisition of Compulsion Games (and a couple of other studios) cites Compulsion's weirdness and willingness to experiment as the deciding factor behind what made Microsoft want to acquire them. While this was stated explicitly up front, it's reassuring to know that Microsoft carried through on its implicit initial promise, and didn't stifle the creativity it so valued in the first place.
We Happy Few was a bigger game than Contrast, and given that We Happy Few was already well into development by the time Compulsion was acquired, its next release will very l⛄ikely be bigger yet. Expect something bi꧋g and weird for the Xbox One sometime after its launch in late 2020.
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