Summary
The former Head of Studio for Dambuster, the team behindDead Island 2, may not be a name gamers know by heart, but his career has been long and fascinating like othervideo game auteurs. That man, Eugenio Vitale, has had a hand in some all-time great titles, and is now the guiding hand behind MY.GAMES' new publishing label, Knights Peak.
Vitale spoke with Game Rant about his storied career, and the ambition to craft one of the few kinds of games he hasn’t had a hand in yet.Knights Peakmay be his avenue to do it, but for now he’s building the label’s starting catalog in partnership with developers.
For every Todd Howard or Yoko Taro, there are innumerable people in the gaming industry whose visions have touched beloved titles, but do not receive as much praise as they deserve. For some, Vitale may fall in that category, but that would be missing out on a storied history that began with the early days of personal computing and the global scale of the Internet.
As you may have heard in stories, I started programming on my own Commodore 64 at the age of 9, and since then, I have fallen in love with programming and computers … I started my first company, where we provided internet access and services, including low-level security configurations for businesses. It was 1994, and in Italy,the internet was largely unknown. That success allowed me to build the initial capital to fund my dream and create my own video games development studio.
By the time Vitale was 20, he was connecting Italians to the internet for the first time and working on a project that was a dream of his: making a video game. He traveled across Italy recruiting who he could to help out, bringing together a small team to build an engine in MS-DOS. When 1998 rolled around, The Dawn Interactive was pushing its first game:Extreme Trial Motocrossfor Windows.
Vitale worked on motocross titles with his studio for a while, learning multiple aspects of game development as well as learning the people skills and publishing strategies that would make him the person that, one day,would become Knights Peak’s Vice-President of Publishing. Vitale admitted that those were skills that, at the time, he lacked.
Vitale also learned how the tech industry worked. He watched the dot-com bubble grow and burst, and he saw investment go from widespread to a dry well. Those were also formative experiences that prepared Vitale for the leaner years the industry would face in the past three decades. But he moved on from motocross eventually, and in 2016 Vitale landed the role of Director of Game Development forDead Island: Definitive Edition.
That started a trajectory toward some massive titles for Vitale, including the then-long awaited Shenmue 3. But it was the sequel toDead Island, which landed in players' hands in 2023, that was one of the most important moments in his career, Vitale said.
While every game holds a special place in my heart,Dead Island 2stands out as a true labor of love. Seeing the game succeed, knowing the incredible dedication and hard work poured into it by the entire team, filled me with immense pride and joy. On a personal level,Dead Island 2demanded significant sacrifices. I spent over a year in the UK, separated from my wife and young children who were back in Germany. My son was just 2, and my daughter was only 4 at the time. It was very challenging.
Though he’d always known that game development comes with sacrifice, it wasDead Island 2that really hammered this point home for him, and awareness of that fact is something he also carries with him into Knights Peak.
On Knights Peak’s Current Success and Vitale’s Dream Game
In June, Knights Peak was publicly announced by MY.GAMES, which itself is afascinating story of game industry history. Vitale served initially as its Director before a title change to Vice-President of Publishing, but in the role so far he has assembled both the publisher’s team and launch catalog of five games:Starship Troopers: Extermination,Nikoderiko,Mandragora,Pathfinder: Kingmaker, andBlast Brigade. He’s also looking to expand that foundation to a larger selection of partnerships.
The things Vitale learned from his earlier career are now used to building partnerships with developers, and providing them with the support they need. His history feeds into all the things Knights Peak is. But that’s not to say Vitale is strictly sticking to the publishing side of things from now on. There is, he says, a kind of game he still is eager to make. And he’s hoping to take inspiration from other masters of the craft.
I’ve always been drawn to story-driven action-adventure games, the kind thatNaughty Dog is renowned for crafting. The seamless blend of compelling narrative, rich characters, and immersive gameplay is something I deeply admire and would love to be a part of creating someday.
Naughty Dog, of course, is best known for its compelling action-adventure titles likeUnchartedandThe Last of Us, both franchises that use the engagement and language of video games to communicate large, dense, cinematic stories for gamers. Naughty Dog has been so successful at this that both franchises have been adapted in traditional cinematic form–a movie forUnchartedstarring Tom Holland and a series starring Pedro Pascal in the case ofThe Last of Us.
That’s not too out of left field for Vitale. He also served as Director of Game Development on 2019’s Russian-styled apocalyptic adventureMetro: Exodus. InExodus,Metroprotagonist Artyom takes a train away from the Moscow metro and across Russia, which is essentially a roadtrip through armageddon like what was seen in the originalThe Last of Us. Though it’s a good groundwork for Vitale’s ambitions,Metro: Exodusdidn’t quite hit the lofty heightshe’s aiming to reach with a Naughty Dog-esque title.
When the time comes to take a swing at that ambitious kind of storytelling, it seems Vitale will have the ideal publisher to work with.
Dead Island 2
WHERE TO PLAY
The open-world zombie slaying action RPG makes its long-awaited return. Dead Island is back, and with it comes a host of enhancements to its winning combination of creative first-person zombie slaying, pitch-black humor and open-world exploration. Welcome to HELL-A. The City of Angels has been transformed into a hellish sprawl, its populace now mutated into disgusting zombies with an insatiable appetite for humans. In this extensive, visceral RPG experience you’ll journey to iconic LA locations, taking on quests, meeting eccentric survivors and enjoying a joyously pulpy narrative along the way. The game’s brutal melee combat gives you access to an expansive array of inventive zombie-slaying weaponry that lets you slice, smash and tear through the hordes before they get the chance to do the same to you. Can you survive HELL-A?
