Indie studio Certain Affinity hopes to turn Halo, Call of Duty experience to AAA game development

Certain Affinity, a developer that has helped create content for games like Call of Duty: Black Ops, Left 4 Dead, Halo: Reach and Halo 4, is ready to make its own AAA game as soon as the time is right, president and creative director Max Hoberman told Gamesindustry.biz.

Hoberman founded Certain Affinity six years ago after serving as multiplayer lead on Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2, and the company has grown from nine to 75 full-time employees. Having chalked up experience working on others' games, the studio began making its own downloadable titles like the real-time strategy game Age of Booty, and Crimson Alliance, an action role-playing game.

"The reality is that we set out to create a company with all the skills and experience to create the next big action franchise," Hoberman told Gamesindustry.biz.

If and when the studio will transition to its own AAA title remains to be seen, he said, because the industry is changing. Hoberman is in no hurry, taking his former employer as a guide.

"I was working at Bungie when they were still independent," he said. "Bungie didn't just get a bunch of guys together and come up with Halo. By the time Halo came out, Bungie had been around for 10 years. And so much of what made Halo successful was the culmination of all these shared experiences and all these learnings this group of people had together. The initial concept for Certain Affinity was really to emulate that success Bungie had and follow in its footsteps to a certain extent."