IO Interactive Publishing MindsEye, The New Game From Ex-GTA Producer Leslie Benzies

Build a Rocket Boy, everywhere, games, gaming, hakan abrak, hitman, IO Interactive, Leslie Benzies, mindseye, News, Unreal Engine 5, video-games

The developers of the Hitman series are teaming up with Build a Rocket Boy, the studio founded by former GTA producer Leslie Benzies, to publish their first game MindsEye – labelled as a proof of concept for the studio’s Everywhere platform.

MindsEye’s official description says it is a “story-driven, action-adventure thriller, set in a fictional near future Americana. Featuring best-in-class cinematics, high octane driving, and explosive combat from legendary game director, Leslie Benzies. Play as Jacob Diaz, a former soldier with a mysterious neural implant who is suffering from memory loss and flashbacks.” A proof-of-concept for the studio’s Unreal Engine 5 MMO that is being touted as a game creation system.

The CEO of IO Interactive Hakan Abrak spoke with IGN and had a lot to say about MindsEye, the Everywhere project, and publishing.

“It was easy to fall in love with [MindsEye] because there were a lot of the parts were there and we were playing it. So they’re still polishing and building things, but it’s going to be a great game,” he said, adding that Everywhere was still being made with “the same technology, in the same engine.”

Everywhere was first seen at Gamescom back in August 2022, and had the internet perplexed as to what it was. Now, 2 years later, it seems to be shaping up as a shared world experience where players can use their specially designed no code building tools to “build, remix and play”, according to Everywhere’s website.

After raising $110 million dollars, Build a Rocket Boy was hit by a wave of layoffs in February of this year. “First talks were very sympathetic and very aligned,” Abrak said about being approached by Benzies’ studio, “I mean, we have had our talks with them and our due diligence and test and play-to-build, and they seem to have extremely talented people helming the different disciplines in different areas from cinematics to gameplay… some really, really heavy hitters in the industry. And I honestly actually don’t know about the layoffs and who and what, but the team that is working on it now that we’ve been talking to the last couple of months is an absolute stellar team and we are looking forward to work even closer with those people.”

IO Interactive are currently working on a James Bond game, the yet-to-be-revealed Project Fantasy, and Hitman 3 VR which is launching exclusively on Meta Quest 3. Abrak made it clear during the IGN interview that publishing other games would only happen under certain circumstances. “It needs to be something that we see ourselves in, not only logically but also emotionally. So I cannot rule out that we don’t do something else.” Still, the studio has set up a branch dedicated to publishing 3rd party games, IOI Partners.