Raphael Colantonio on His Decision to Leave Arkane Studios

Raphael Colantonio, the founder of Arkane Studios, has recently announced his departure from the gaming industry after 18 productive years. He then opened up about this decision at the Spanish Gamelab conference, noting that those 18 years felt to him like one exhausting marathon and that he’s ready to finally take a break. Can’t say that I blame him. Here’s an excerpt from Eurogamer’s report on this matter:

Colantonio, who left Arkane after a whopping 18 years at the studio, told an audience at the Spanish conference Gamelab today he needed a proper holiday after over a decade of shipping high-profile video games.

“Well it’s a mixed bag of emotions because of course I love Arkane, I love Bethesda and it’s been 18 years of very fascinating adventures and some super-hard times, because as you know we were independent and we almost went out of business several times,” he said on-stage.

“The being part of a bigger group and shipping Dishonored, shipping Prey, growing into two studios: all that was awesome. Leaving this is actually a really hard choice.

“And at the same time I’ve been doing this for 18 years. I feel like I’ve never ever sat down for a minute; I just feel like it’s been a long non-stop run, so I do feel I need to take a break and rest for a little while.

“It’s one of those things you don’t even realise until it really starts to hurt,” he added, “because you’re moving and it’s fun and there’s a lot of cool things happening. I’m someone with a lot of drive, who’s driven by adventure and I like what I do.

“But at the same time if you run and run these things start to hurt and you don’t really think about it. Probably about a year or two ago I started to feel a slow need for focusing on things that are not work related.”

[…]

Arkane Austin just released Prey under Colantonio’s direction. What comes next for the game and series is unclear. “Right now our studio’s cramming together to see what we’re going to do next,” he said. “We’re also talking about the IP, what to do with it, etc. There’s no definitive set plans or anything other than what’s been announced so far.”

It sounds like Arkane Austin is working on something, though. “Both studios have games coming,” Colantonio said, “so I’m not worried for the quality of the games.” Dishonored 2 standalone expansion Death of the Outsider will be released 15th September.