Behaviour UK will be another “no crunch” studio from the Dead by Daylight dev

We had a chat with Behaviour executive vice-president Wayne Meazza

Behaviour Interactive recently released Meet Your Maker, an FPS where the players make the levels that you play over and over, hoping to memorize each one’s unique tricks. There are few games outside of Mario Maker that use this style of gameplay, and that is what Behaviour does best, coming up with new and interesting ideas – usually with a multiplayer twist.

Meet Your Maker isn’t even Behaviour’s most outlandish concept. For that we look to Hooked on You, a dating simulator where you romance eligible serial killers from Behaviour’s horror game, Dead by Daylight. When we first saw the trademark, we couldn’t believe it was real. However, the trailer and eventual release showed that it was very much a thing.

“At Behaviour, we always strive to create unique gaming experiences,” executive vice-president Wayne Meazza tells GLHF. “What started as a crazy idea in a brainstorming session actually became the core for a new Dead by Daylight experience our community was not expecting. Reception by our players has been positive as it added a fun twist to our dark universe. Seeing our brutal characters taken from the gloomy world of the Entity and into a sunny tropical paradise where romance and mystery abound has been a wild ride, and we thank our players for taking a chance at love with us.”

One of Canada’s largest studios is now expanding to the UK. Behaviour UK - North, formerly known as SockMonkey Studios, worked on a number of porting and smaller development projects, such as The Escapists and Totally Accurate Battlegrounds. It seems that not much will change following the acquisition, only the partnerships will be bigger. “Behaviour UK – North will operate as a valuable partner for Behaviour’s Services division,” Meazza explains. “[This] provides development services to clients such as Microsoft, Sony, EA, Warner, Netflix, and Take-Two, among many others.” This was by design. Meazza continues. “As we like to say, our acquisition strategy is all about finding the right studio, both in terms of technical expertise and culture.”

Meet Your Maker / Behaviour Interactive

The work culture at Behaviour is one that has been discussed often in the gaming industry. It publicly denounced ‘crunch’ culture, where developers have been seen working long hours, to the point of even living in the studio, to get a game ready for release. “Our zero-crunch approach is a pillar of Behaviour’s culture and applies to all our studios,” Meazza says. “SockMonkey also had a zero-crunch policy, which is another reason why we saw them as a good fit for Behaviour! Both companies have the employees at heart, putting humans first.”

Behaviour isn’t only expanding into new studios. A new partnership with horror movie makers Blumhouse Productions shows how it is also willing to move into other media as well. “The Dead by Daylight universe has a lot of depth, and the possibilities to tell our stories are endless,” Meazza says. “Over the years, we’ve explored many ways on how to expand on our game including a comic book series that is under production as we speak and even a board game which will be released in the coming weeks.

Dead by Daylight / Behaviour Interactive

“Making a movie out of our game has been a project we’ve been toying with for some time. It was only fitting that the leading horror multiplayer hit game teams up with the Hollywood horror powerhouses that are Blumhouse and Atomic Monster to make the Dead by Daylight movie come to life. We are big fans of Jason Blum and James Wan’s work, and they’ve always been big fans of what we do.”

Another Behaviour project that mixes media is the upcoming Silent Hill: Ascension, which was announced at the Silent Hill showcase last year. From what little we saw it will mix video streaming and video games to create an immersive experience. We saw so little we were desperate to find out more. However, despite our best efforts, there was “nothing we can share at this point.”