LogInFormer Bungie executive Jonty Barnes revealed how he moved from working on sci-fi shooters to creating football management games and discussed his new studio's debut title.
In November, former Sports Interactive executive Neil Dejyothin and former English Football Association CEO Alex Horne as well as former Bungie veteran Jonty Barnes revealed they joined a new football-focused development studio, Formation Games.
While Dejyothin and Horne's participation in the new startup seemed quite obvious since both executives have backgrounds in Football Manager and real-life Football Association respectively, it wasn't that clear how Barnes, who previously oversaw shooters like Halo and Destiny, ended up heading the team creating football management mobile games.
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz, Barnes explained what brought him to the football-focused studio and spoke about Formation's debut title, a football management game called Club.
Speaking about the reasons behind joining Formation Games, Barnes said that he has been fond of playing football video games long before he joined Bungie and started working on sci-fi shooters and that he has always been interested in learning how to make such a game.
"I always wanted to make a football game," Barnes said. "I used to play a game called Kick Off on my Atari ST back in the early '90s by a guy called Dino Dini, and I was thinking 'I'd love to know how to do this,' and like any player, thinking about how I could level it up."
The executive shared that even when he still was at Bungie, he played a lot of mobile football games and when he received an offer to create a mobile football managing game, he was instantly excited about this idea.
Club, the title that Formation is currently developing, is still in the very early stages but, according to Barnes, it is set to be "a real-life football RPG, with social experiences at its heart." In the game, players will take on the role of a club owner and will be able to manage real football clubs, players, and even actual stories from the football world with an "alternate slant."
The game will be coming only to mobile platforms. Barnes explained that Formation's decision to focus on mobile games simply comes from the fact that mobile is a platform where most of the players are as it has a lower barrier for entry than PC or console games.
"For me personally, mobile is where I spend most of my personal play time these days, and when you're a sports fan, it's a logical platform to be leading on," he said.
You can learn more about Barnes' new role and the game Formation is currently developing by reading the full interview here.
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