One of the surprise announcements from this E3 season was a new Avatar game, Frontiers Of Pandora. While it likely came as a shock to most of us, the project had indeed been in the works for years prior. This is according to a 2020 autobiography from Massive Entertainment’s David Polfeldt, in which he detailed the long search for a developer.
Most shocking is how, according to Polfeldt, one developer that Ubisoft and James Cameron’s team agreed on was dropped from the project last minute…for offering them cocaine when they went in to sign the contract.
“They jumped out of the cab, greeted the receptionist, and entered the large, merchandise-filled conference room”, explains Polfeldt. “But instead of meeting a jubilant team ready to make the finest Avatar game anyone could conceive, they found themselves facing broken and desperate people looking over their shoulders, as if in paranoia.”
The poor first impressions only got worse, as Polfeldt puts simply: “The meeting quickly took a turn for the worse when the studio head offered the visitors some of his cocaine.”
Polfeldt does not name the studio in question for obvious reasons, only revealing that it is based in Europe. He also explains that James Cameron’s team had incredibly high standards for who they worked with, and immediately scrapped any plans to work with the European developer after being offering the cocaine.
This little bit of behind the information was kindly spotted by Resetera member Is_that_my_horse, who also explained that, according to the book, the search for the developer took up to four years.
