Sega went for the project thanks to a tech demo
When the rumors first got out that Creative Assembly was working on Alien: Isolation, I wasn’t concerned so much as I was curious how the studio landed the project. Alistair Hope and Jude Bond spoke about exactly that in an interview with Edge.
The duo led a “handful of guys” to create a proof-of-concept survival-horror game that “went a bit viral within Sega, and suddenly it seemed likethis pipe dream of making a game based onthe original Alien [film] started to get somemomentum,” according to Hope.
While the company has in recent years become best known for its strategy franchise Total War — “We used to make sports games, until we didn’t,” noted Bond — the studio has “had to hire for this project … We’ve been very picky.”
“Now we’ve got our own floor and we’re about 100 strong, and building the team has been a bittersweet tale, Isuppose,” Hope elaborated. “There have been some British devs that have had to close, and we benefited from that. At least we could find work for some very talented people.”
How Creative Assembly convinced Sega to greenlight Alien: Isolation [Edge]