Activision Dropping Sleeping Dogs Turned Out To Be A Good Thing

Sleeping Dogs

You never can tell a blessing in disguise when it comes upon you. Only hindsight will reveal it.

And that's what happened with developer United Front Games. They started work on what was to be True Crime: Hong Kong, reached the alpha stage, and then their publisher - Activision - dropped 'em. Bad news, right?

As it turns out, no. The team got extra time to polish and refine the project that had become Sleeping Dogs and then, Square Enix picked them up and gave them even more time to make the game great. In speaking to OPM UK, producer Dan Sochan said that extra time was absolutely necessary:

"We were just about alpha. So we were pretty far along and at that point we had a 4-5 month gap that let us really focus on the core aspects of the game,” he explains. “Once we were with Square it gave us a year to really polish and tune the experience, and get some fresh eyes on the game. It was a great partnership for everyone."

This allowed them to have "more user testing," too, and Sochan added that Square understood the necessity of producing a top-notch, ultimately competitive title. We also recall Square Enix executives saying they couldn't figure out why Activision dropped the project, because it seemed extremely promising. Well, the end result seems to have been positive the whole way 'round. Finished Sochan:

"It’s been amazing. It’s exciting to us to see that same sort of response from the media, from the fans. It really has been a dream come true. We’ve always felt very strongly and passionately about the game and we’ve continued to work on it in-between publishers because we felt we had something unique and special."

And of course, everyone wants to know about a sequel. But Sochan repeated what we've heard before from the developer, that they're not thinking about a follow-up effort right now. Rather, they're focusing on DLC for Sleeping Dogs, so get ready for more of that.

Related Game(s): Sleeping Dogs

Tags: sleeping dogs, activision, square enix, united front games

11/13/2012 10:30:15 AM Ben Dutka

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