Ulf Andersson is in his right place

Ulf Andersson doesn’t like talking to people. I’ve just arrived at 10 Chambers’ Stockholm office for a day with the company’s CEO when he drops the bombshell that he doesn’t relish the idea of socialising for an entire day.

It’s rare to meet a CEO that has both the self awareness to examine their own strengths and failings, with the willingness to dissect them in front of a tape recorder.

Hours later, after a day of talking about the game design of titles like Rust, Rainbow Six Siege, Counter-Strike, of dinner, drinks in a dive bar and even a rousing round of Time Crisis 5 that had him bemoaning my relative success with a lightgun, it becomes apparent that it’s something of a facade. Gregarious, interesting and honest almost to a fault, Andersson can step up and socialise if he needs to. He’s just happier in a quiet room, solving game design problems and keeping himself occupied with making games rather than the dance around them.

It’s a privileged position, to decent the political part of making games just doesn’t interest you anymore. But Ulf Andersson has been running games studios since he first founded Swedish studio Grin – a fairly prominent name in 00’s development – in his native Stockholm back in 1997 with his brother Bo. While most video game faces are happy with travelling the event scene and being A Name, Andersson is more interested in keeping his circle small and staying busy. This is why, for him, 10 Chambers is just the right size at close to 100 employees. It’s a studio Andersson himself promised he’d quit if they ever had more than ten. “I’m still here,” Andersson says, bashfully, when asked how that particular promise was going.

Andersson has always been happy to do his own thing. Growing up in Stockholm, he found himself burning through his entire collection of Amiga titles on his chunky 80s gaming machine and thinking about changes he’d make to some of his favourite games.

“After a while you start thinking ‘maybe I can just look at the source code, maybe I could make a few changes,” Andersson said of his childhood experiments with game development. “Suddenly I’d be at a friend’s house and we’re playing Rambo on the C64 and we’re throwing out ideas, building out a game in our heads.”

“There was a real renegade spirit; we’d try to get things done with this raw passion, but not much of a support structure.” 10 Chambers’ Ulf Andersson talks about the early days of Stockholm game development.

This led to some experiments with artwork and programming on the Amiga, but it wasn’t until Another World – an adventure game released for the Amiga in 1991 – that Andersson realised he could give it a shot. “I completed Another World, right? I got to the credits and there’s like one dude who made coding, art, everything. Then there’s one dude who made the music. When I saw that I thought ‘I’m young, I’m invincible’ So, I set out to learn everything. I didn’t know any programmers. I didn’t know any artists. I didn’t even know people who played games.”

Andersson says he began analysing the games that he was playing from this point, experimenting and trying to learn as much as possible from them. He’s still the same now. During the day I spend with him he can easily and quickly pull apart complex problems and explain them to people around them, but doesn’t really have the time for trivialities or menial details.

Later on, Andersson touches back on his desire to analyse everything. He touches on reloading in his games, saying that characters performing interactions with meaningful intent is something he feels strongly about, often recording first-person shooters and analysing the firing and reloading of them frame by frame to see why things feel good, or don’t work. He points to the famous Heat scene with Val Kilmer reloading a Colt 733 assault rifle as an example of reloading with intent. “I’ll never make a game that has reloads with flair,” Andersson says. “I need to feel like my character wants to do what I want to do. So there’s no juggling mags, it’s just POW POW, the character is thinking about getting to survive and do the thing.”

His career started after he applied for a job at Massive Entertainment, a Swedish game company. “I didn’t get turned down, but I got a lukewarm reception.” says Andersson. “They said there was another guy who was equally good but requested less pay and so I said ‘hey, go with that guy.’” Andersson applied for a few other companies but got a similarly tepid reaction. “We decided to just do our own thing instead,” says Andersson. The brothers eventually decided to found their own studio. “A year after that we were at our first game show, and I’ve been riding this train ever since.”

Grin’s first title was Ballistics, a futuristic racing game that Andersson describes as “the best thing we made for a long time.” Ballistics is the perfect example of Andersson’s pragmatism in game development; it was a racing game because Grin didn’t have any physics tech, which would allow the cars to feel like they were moving when they hit other objects. The game involves racing through tubes, originally prompted by a practical revelation from Ulf. “I thought, what happens if I drive off the road, would we need physics tech then? Then I thought… not if it’s a cylinder.”

Andersson has been directing games for as long as he’s been developing them. Directing often carries the extra weight of being in charge of a project, and for Andersson It’s given him a unique perspective, which is the only way to describe it when he shrugs and admits that these early years at Grin were a little “cowboy”. His words.

“I started Grin with my brother, we recruited people from IRC by basically saying ‘can you make 3D art?’ and they’d send us a screenshot or something, then we’d just put them on a train or drive them to Stockholm.”

“No one really knew what they were doing,” added Andersson, talking about the early days of game development in Stockholm. “I started Grin with my brother, we recruited people from IRC (internet relay chat) by basically saying ‘can you make 3D art?’ and they’d send us a screenshot or something, then we’d just put them on a train or drive them to Stockholm.”

Andersson explains that most of their new recruits came from Gothenburg or Uppsala, because most of the talent in Stockholm had already signed up with big studios who had expanded into the area. Grin was instead hiring really young people or students with a lot of passion, but not a lot of control. “There was a real renegade spirit; we’d try to get things done with this raw passion, but not much of a support structure.”

Grin came to an end on August 12, 2009 when the company filed for bankruptcy. In a statement on their website, a statement from the Andersson brothers references an “unreleased masterpiece that we weren’t allowed to finish.” Ulf Andersson claims that this project – a western Final Fantasy title codenamed Fortress – wasn’t the sole reason for the closure, but it did play a big part.

Andersson explains that Fortress would have been a spin-off to the world of Final Fantasy 12, and was conceived as the first-ever western developed Final Fantasy game. Originally, he went to Square Enix’s office after execs had toured Grin’s studio and came away impressed.

“I went to grab the pitch folder out of my bag in front of a room full of suited up guys from Square Enix,” explained Andersson. “Then my contact says ‘don’t show them the pitch’ and they tell me they want me to do Final Fantasy. Square Enix had come to see the Bionic Commando reboot, pre-release – before it was really fucked up,” adds Andersson with his trademark no-bullshit approach. Bionic Commando – perfectly average with a metacritic of around 70 on all platforms – is not a game Andersson seems to have much love for.

“The pitch is that we were making a western spin [on Final Fantasy] that’s more of an action RPG. That was the concept, something for the Western market, otherwise they could have just done it themselves.”

Andersson says that his vision for the game was something with a much darker tone than the usual Final Fantasy fare. “The idea is that you have these characters that have fans super engaged But what’s the value in that? Right? Is it like pandering to the crowd saying, ‘Oh, they’re gonna keep doing the same thing?’ No, it’s, it’s like sacrificing, killing them, making the drama work.”

Andersson laughs. “I was going through the story at Square Enix in England, and I was saying ‘and then this character dies, and this is what happens to this character’ and this guy in the office was crying in the background of this meeting.”

“I was going through the story at Square Enix in England, and I was saying ‘and then this character dies, and this is what happens to this character’ and this guy in the office was crying in the background of this meeting.”

However, Andersson says he feels like Fortress met its end because of communication issues between Square Enix’s English office and the Japanese office.

“I think my big problem was that the thing they wanted in Japan didn’t seem like it was communicated to the English office, and we were working mostly with the English office. It just felt like we were getting further and further away from what they wanted and what we agreed on…”

Andersson shrugs. “Then they look at it and they’re saying ‘this is not what we ordered’.”

Square Enix pulled the plug on Fortress in August 2009, and inadvertently doomed the studio. However, Andersson suggests a real part of the problem was that the studio had also released three other games that year: third-person movie tie-ins Wanted: Weapons of Fate and Terminator Salvation alongside a reboot of classic platform Bionic Commando. The games reviewed poorly.

“There was a financial crash in 2008, but also there was the problem of Terminator being quite shitty and Wanted being quite shitty and Bionic Commando being quite shitty. It doesn’t help.” said Andersson.

While he says the team pulled together as best as they could and each project had mechanics and elements that were “super dope”, he claims the blame laid partially on him for directing three games at the same time, something he described as “chaos.”

It also taught him a more personal lesson. Andersson didn’t want to work with licensed games and established franchises anymore.

“I’m not that good at making other people’s games.” says Andersson. “You can tell me what you want and I can try and do that. Maybe. But don’t tell me what to do, because I’ll try but I’ll fuck it up.”

“Ask me again in ten years and maybe I’ll have changed my mind, but I think licenses are such a limiting thing” says Andersson. “You think the Terminator license is going to be great, but then we had like five months to build that game. I know how to make good gameplay, but I think I struggle when it feels like people are interfering with what we’re doing. I’ve learnt a lot from working with studios like Ubisoft, Capcom and Square Enix. I learnt tons, but it’s not really my space to be in.”

As Grin closed down, Andersson and a few staff members made a new company and decided to keep making games. Burnt from running a huge company – Grin had 250 employees at one stage – Andersson wanted to make something smaller.

“We were planning to do mobile games, because that’s easy, right? But we were sending pitches to Apple and they never replied, and it’s because those pitches were ideas that would never ever work. It was things like math puzzles with a timer and adult graphics.”

“There was a financial crash in 2008, but also there was the problem of Terminator being quite shitty and Wanted being quite shitty and Bionic Commando being quite shitty. It doesn’t help,”

The team was trying to find their way back to game development in a way that worked for them after Grin. Mobile games gave way to a sci-fi FPS [first-person shooter], something Andersson said they could make and knew how to make, but that he found himself too fatigued with development to do it justice. The answer was a co-op heist game called Payday, with the game and its sequel perhaps comprising two of Andersson’s best known games.

“I’d been pitched [co-op heist games] for years, but I decided that because it was easy to explain why a heist game worked, and I didn’t have the energy to do a sci-fi thing. So we did that, people liked it, and as Overkill we got to make Payday and Payday 2.”

Eventually, Overkill merged with Starbreeze. While Starbreeze went on to have a very public implosion in 2018, Andersson left the company around 2015 when the stress of development caused him to have a brief stint in a mental institution.

“I had psychosis for around 10 hours,” said Andersson. “Then I needed rehabilitation for eight months and needed to work out what was next. I met Svante (Vinternatt, one of the studio’s co-founders) and he told me straight ‘If you’re starting something new I’ll make coffee and shit’”

“My nightmare at the time was the idea of starting a new company, so I turned him down. But then, we were at a bachelor party and we got grouped up together to play some games. I was sat on the couch, watching as he organised everyone and got stuff done. So, I went home and thought to myself ‘he probably can’t start a game company, it’s unlikely he could get the backing. But I can.’”

With 10 Chambers, Andersson made some changes. Learning that he worked better with a proper support system, he’s still acting as the CEO but says he’s moved away from what he thought a CEO was in the past.

“10 Chambers came from the idea that we’d have a small group and you have to negotiate with that group, agree on stuff and use people’s knowledge,” he explains, visibly puffing himself out and putting on a voice for the next line. “Otherwise it’s ‘I’m top dog, I’m the top shit and I make the decisions. Do what I say and everybody’s doing something good, but if someone’s doing something bad, that’s on them.”

“That’s super toxic, and I’ve never enjoyed that, but I think I’ve fallen into that mindset because you work with these people and you start to become like them a tiny bit.”

10 Chambers’ first title, the stealth & shooting co-op title GTFO didn’t set the world on fire, but found plenty of fans for its hardcore approach to cooperative play. It’s a purists’ game, where players will either collaborate or die alone. It’s all spelled out in the game’s motto, daubed on key art and merch: “work together or die together”

It’s easy to see Andersson’s newest company is a flat rejection of that style of management, and embracing the idea that operating as a group with collective decision making can develop better games. Indeed, following Andersson around the office for a day sees him greet most people as friends, something that he says was impossible at Grin and even at Starbreeze. It’s a feeling that crystallised for him when he got into the lift at Grin, and didn’t recognise an employee he was sharing a lift with.

Recognising that there are some aspects of the CEO life that he’s not well suited for, Andersson has made key hires with people that he trusts to help him in those areas. “I still run the company from a strategy point of view, I make sure I still run it culturally, and you do pick up a little knowledge after running a company for years when it comes to economy, law, whatever. But I think I’ve learnt it’s all about trusting the people you work with.” grins Andersson.

Delegating to a layer of good people is something that Andersson says had been lacking from every company he’s been a part of beforehand. Here, he gets to focus on using his brain to solve problems, and ensuring that his creative team get to remain in the “safe bubble” that lets them make the best games they can make.

The end result? “I’m actually having fun making games.” says Andersson. “It’s not something I’d say as a marketing thing, we just have a good team and everyone is getting what they need to make good games.” a cynic could say that this was an elaborate double-bluff from Andersson and that he is using the statement of being happy with a good team as a marketing ploy, but actually there’s never the sense that Andersson really cares either way.

Stockholm’s game development scene seems to have grown with Andersson, too. The city is now a hub for making games. 10 Chambers is still located here, alongside strategy giant Paradox, Minecraft developers Mojang and mobile games outfit King. As we leave the office for lunch, Andersson yells in delight as someone walks past in a Grin beanie hat, and the two men embrace. His acquaintance, it turns out, works at mobile developers MAG Interactive, headquartered on the floor below 10 Chambers expansive (and fancy) office. This sort of talent tends to cross pollinate

What’s next? The day after my visit, 10 Chambers has an entire cinema screen booked to show the movie Heat; equal parts social gathering and preparation. It’s also intended to help gear team members up for their next project, a heist game.

“We’re getting back on that heist shit,” said Andersson when I spoke to him in Cologne last year at Gamescom. He has unfinished business in the space and thinks there’s more to do in the heist world after his previous success with the Payday franchise. While they’re not showing the game off yet, because Andersson claims 10 Chambers doesn’t want to miss a deadline or overpromise, he’s pretty confident with what they’re working on.

As I later say goodbye to Andersson, at a little after midnight outside of a weird mix of dive bar and arcade, all pretense that he’s not a people person is lost. It’s been a full day of talking about games he loves, mechanics he wants to rework or experiment with, and a lot of putting the world to rights. Andersson seems comfortable, taking the big swings he’s always wanted to make during his career. It’s hard not to feel like he’s in the right place, and that 10 Chambers seem to be right there with him.

For more information about 10 Chambers, click here.

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