From GameIndustry.biz:

When EA Montreal released Army of Two in March 2008 it received very different receptions in the US and Europe. America accepted the tone of the game – macho, crude, in-your-face – while Europe snubbed it, put off by the frat-boy humour and trash talk. Aware that cutting off half of the audience isn’t a wise move in a time when hardcore gaming is becoming a niche, next year’s sequel, Army of Two: The 40th Day , is EA Montreal’s attempt to make the core game more appealing without dumbing down the experience to pander to a wider audience.

GamesIndustry.biz recently got the opportunity to catch up with executive producer at EA Montreal Reid Schneider, to discuss the sequel, how hardcore games need to evolve to remain relevant in a changing market, and how game developers can benefit from looking for new inspiration in different media.

Q: You talk at the Montreal International Game Summit last month was about bringing in new audiences to games without sacrificing hardcore sensibilities. Can you expand on that, and how that relates to your work at EA Montreal?

Reid Schneider: Really what I wanted to talk about was our approach to making games. The market is expanding with more casual players coming up, so we’re starting to see a decline in terms of hardcore sales based on NPD data. So as developers, how do we think about making games that our customers want? The people I always look to are Valve, who I think are brilliant at it. Valve is super smart about it. When you hear them speak it’s about connecting with their customers and making games that are focused on the customers and making a better experience for your audience. One of the things I’m trying to look at now with our team is that when we’re building games and deciding what the features are going to be we’ve got to make sure that we make games that are really audience-focused. Because games are changing. I talk to Clint Hocking (creative director at Ubisoft Montreal) a lot and what he says is when Ubisoft started development on Far Cry 2 in 2003 tastes were really different. If you think about what’s successful now and what was successful in 2003 before the market changed. It’s incumbent on us a lot, whether you’re a developer or a journalist, you’ve got to think about where game are going and how they connect with the audience in a deep and meaningful way.

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Read the rest of the interview.

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Tags: army of two, ea, Interview, montreal, Reid Schneider