A2M Rebrands To Behaviour, Confirms Wet 2, Plans More Original IP

Montreal-based developer Artificial Mind & Movement, or A2M, has long focused on work-for-hire, including products like Indiana Jones and the Staff of Kings, and versions of Iron Man. But it's now hoping to add more original IP projects alongside its core concentration. As a sign of this new focus, the studio's changing its name to Behaviour -- the name it had as a developer in the 1990s. With 375 employees, five internal studio groups and offices in Montreal and Santiago, Chile, the studio has already begun to make strides toward its goal of creating more IP in-house, such as newer titles like Wet and Naughty Bear. Although no further details on the title are yet available, Behaviour CEO Remi Racine confirms to Gamasutra that Wet 2, a sequel to the Bethesda-published console action game, is in development at the studio. And as the studio hopes to keep developing more original IP, Racine tells us that the name change was intended "to motivate people internally and to look forward, but also when we decided to change the name." Explaining the name change, he added: "When you look at our current name on the box and in the public, it's not as sexy or as interesting as Behaviour." By no means will the studio step back on its work-for-hire presence, either. Racine says that ideally, the internally-developed projects will have the side-effect of growing the company's footprint overall and raising the studio's profile among potential clients. "There will be some rebound positivity on the publishers," Racine says. "We will continue to do work for hire on consoles," he adds. "The console market will eventually change to a more digital console, I feel. Obviously our growth within the last year -- and within, I would say, the next 2-3 years, it will be within the digital market: Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, iOS, Facebook and Web browser games. All of that will outgrow ... our console traditional business. which tends to not be growing, basically, within the next few years." Of course, it won't be easy: "There's a pressure towards budget on console games -- [players] want better and I understand why," says Racine. "They want better games for a lot less money, and we have to be much more clever in how we do games to be successful."