One of the heads of Ubisoft’s studio Massive, David Polfeldt, tells a wild story about why the team of James Cameron chose Massive to develop the new game “Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora“. Originally, another AAA studio from Europe was supposed to get the job, but the head of that unnamed other studio allegedly offered everyone a line of cocaine.
This is the situation:
- We knew that the Swedish studio Massive has been working on an Avatar game in Malmö since 2017. Since E3, we have seen the first trailers.
- In 2020, a key executive from Massive published an autobiography. The book mainly revolves around David Polfeldt’s journey to Massive and the development of The Division 1. However, the autobiography contains a delicate anecdote about how Massive landed the Avatar project.
- Apparently, another studio had the Avatar project all but secured when the head of the studio made a fateful mistake: He offered cocaine to business partners.
“Something had gone horribly wrong”
This is the anecdote: According to the anecdote, James Cameron’s film company, Lightstorm Entertainment, had actually already decided on a studio to develop a game based on Avatar. It is said that it was a “AAA studio” from Europe.
This studio had already been working on the project for 3 to 4 years, and signing the deal was just a formality. The team had years of hard work behind them to meet James Cameron’s high standards.
In an excerpt from the biography, a moment is described when one of the employees of Lightstorm Entertainment, Brooks Brown, and one of his business partners entered the studio’s large conference room (via imgur):
They jumped out of the taxi, greeted the receptionist, and entered the large conference room filled with merchandise. But instead of meeting a cheering team ready to make the best Avatar game ever, they encountered broken, desperate people looking over their shoulders as if suffering from paranoia.
Something was wrong.
The meeting had taken a terrible turn when the studio head offered the visitors some of his cocaine. Suddenly, Lightstorm had no choice but to abandon the path they had intended to take.
From “The Dream Architects: Adventures in the Video Game Industry” by David Polfeldt
When this deal fell apart, Lightstorm chose Massive. Here, they had already had good experiences with Josh Mosqueira, whom one of the Lightstorm business partners knew from his work on Far Cry 3.
Gaming fans speculate on which studio’s head offered cocaine to the people
This is how it is being discussed: People in the gaming forum resetera are primarily discussing which studio it could be that lost a huge deal because the studio head offered business partners a round of cocaine.
It seems to bring people a lot of joy to throw around some names. After all, there aren’t that many AAA studios in Europe. They quickly find their favorites.
The Avatar game looked very good in the first images, some even suspect: a bit too good.
Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora looks really good – Players fear a downgrade
