Penn: Huge potential remains for sandbox games

Though many publishers may have cooled their obsession with mimicking the GTA formula, a former development consultant for Crackdown believes that the genre is still bursting with potential.

Decorated game industry veteran Gary Penn – now head of development at Denki – said that there is still “an insane amount of potential for freeform city-based play and games.”

He added, “GTA is under no obvious threat, not even slightly. Which isn’t surprising, really. That kind of toyset is a bastard to build at all let alone well.”

Penn’s comments are part of Develop’s FAQ interview with the industry legend, which you can read in full here.

Elsewhere in the interview, Penn struggles to single out a favourite game of all time, and elsewhere explains how Denki is putting the finishing touches to the XBLA version of Quarrel.