When Ex-Naughty Dog founder Jason Rubin was named president of THQ a couple weeks back, he inherited a company with a whole lot of problems. It shouldn't be any surprise that his order of business is to take a hard look at every single game the publisher has its hand in.
At E3 last week, Jason Rubin started discussing his thoughts on the company so far in a couple of very interesting interviews.
Speaking with Polygon, Rubin said that one his primary goals at THQ will be changing the general tone of the publisher's offerings - Rubin wants THQ to be a studio known for making emotionally mature AAA games. Rubin specifically pointed to the publisher's last major hit, Saint's Row: The Third , as an example of a game that didn't reach it's full potential of its "embarrassing" content.
"I look at that title and I say, ‘Who cares what it is and why it got to be what it is? From that team we can make something that isn't embarrassing," says Rubin.
That says he isn't opposed to publishing games with childish humor so long as that's at the core of game, like South Park: The Stick of Truth.
Overall, Rubin's seems to think positively of THQ's upcoming lineup: While he refuses to highlight any particular game has definitely "safe" from cancellation, there aren't any particular projects that he thinks should be automatically cut, either.
He told Joystiq, for example, that despite the company's dire straits he'd like to keep the company's Montreal studio, which was opened in 2009 to develop the sequel to Homeland and the yet-to-be-named project from Assassin's Creed creator Patrice Desilet.
"I love Montreal. I definitely wanna do right by Montreal, and I definitely wanna fill that studio. But having said that, if we fail to do that for any reason, that's not going to be a cause for failure for the company."
Rubin concedes that the 400-person studio is a little bigger than the company can realistically afford. "There may be empty seats." How that will effect Homefront 2 or the project from Desilet will only become clear in the coming months.
