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Den of Wolves Is What Happens When Heist Games Grow Up7/18/2025
Some interviews tend to spiral into a repetition of rehearsed PR phrases that don’t really reveal much. But then there are studios that are still willing to talk openly about their future. Like 10 Chambers, the team founded by the creators of Payday
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Some interviews tend to spiral into a repetition of rehearsed PR phrases that don’t really reveal much. But then there are studios that are still willing to talk openly about their future. Like 10 Chambers, the team founded by the creators of Payday and known for the sci-fi co-op shooter GTFO.
Its founders, Ulf Andersson and Simon Viklund, don’t put on masks when speaking to journalists — which makes for not only a refreshingly honest conversation, but often a funny one as well. They shared plenty of interesting details about their upcoming cyberpunk heist game Den of Wolves, opened up about the development process, commented on the competition, and talked about the atmosphere in their studio — where, as it happens, a film crew is constantly following them around to shoot the upcoming documentary Do The Game. Robin Björkell, head of communications at 10 Chambers, also chimed in with a few insights.
How would you compare Den of Wolves to GTFO and Payday?
Ulf: Two very different things, but at the same time very similar. Okay, so I would say Den of Wolves sort of uses a lot of that level size from Payday— a bit more concentrated but still bigger, a bit more like moving around—than Payday. Payday can have very small, extremely small maps. We tend to move a lot more in GTFO, but this is moving a lot less, but still moving. And because we utilize that for different types of mechanics like the stealth stuff and other things to make that work, it’s more competitive. We're not going into details, but there’s more progression, more narrative than both of those games, I would say.
Simon: Every new game we've been doing is a first-person shooter co-op game since 2005 or 2004. Because we worked on Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter on the PC and the sequel, and they had both—at least the sequel—you could play the entire campaign in co-op. Obviously, that was before the entire genre of four-player co-op games was born with Left 4 Dead. But every new game we've done since then in that genre— you know, we did Payday: The Heist, Payday 2, GTFO, and now Den of Wolves. It's like looking at the formula of that genre of games and seeing how we can improve the formula.
And that goes for storytelling, because in GTFO there's a really nice rich backstory, but it's told in a weird way, we can admit. It's like there’s friction within the team— if one player is interested in the story and they're reading on this terminal, and the rest of the team is like, „Fuck, let's go, we need to kill some monsters!“ So that's what we're looking at.
So it's more like trying to put the storytelling in a place where you can consume it on your own time to a greater degree and not be caught up in it during gameplay moments, so it's more streamlined in that regard, where when you're on the heist, it's about the progression of that heist. It's not about storytelling — we're not like running off on our own trying to find logs or story bits and stuff like that.
And compared to Payday, there are a lot of improvements obviously, like how Payday works with stealth—you can only start in stealth, and then if you get an alert, the guards, you never go back to stealth again in that game. In this game, we have the ability to allow the players to regain control. GTFO is way more forgiving in stealth than Payday, arguably, because you can go back to stealth. If you want to clear a map in stealth in Payday, you have to restart it if you're noticed.
I know they fudged it a little bit in the third game. I've only played that for like a weekend during the beta, I think we played it together. Those are nice additions because you can be like, “Oh, you're in the wrong place, you're not supposed to be here,” and they escort you out of that area. So they fudged it a little bit, but once they actually draw their weapons and you're supposed to start a firefight, it never goes back to stealth again. And you can do that in both GTFO and Den of Wolves, you can actually regain control even in those situations, which is super nice. So it's more dynamic in a way.
But there are many more improvements, obviously. I talked about it in the presentation, about player agency and how in Payday it's like, “Oh, we spawned in front of the bank with the explosives you need in order to break into the vault,” but Den of Wolves is a game where you need to actually look at the map beforehand and say like, “We're going to need explosives, let's go to this place and break in and find explosives.” You need to actually bring the explosives yourselves. So I mean, all those are additions or improvements to the formula.
It's a bit tricky to tell a deeper story in co-op games as you mentioned, because players have different agencies in the game. So what's your approach on that?
Ulf: I would say telling the story outside of the missions is the key to that, but also focusing on a couple of missions where you do tell the story, or like show the results of all your choices. So like the extraction thing you play—there's this long walking, quite boring sequence— but if you play the story, then it's like, “That's because of that and this and that,” because it's not meaningful if you play the entire mission.
So we do narrative in the map, but we try to make it very specific— where there's like a bigger chunk of gameplay afterwards, so it's really worth it to do it. If you die and have to play it again, you probably bypass the story part. We just try to use all elements we can but not get stuck in it. Like GTFO had this problem of no storytelling in the lobby or outside the mission, so then you have to try to do everything in the game.
Simon: Payday is really light on the start— most of the storytelling in that game I would argue happens in YouTube videos, like live action and trailers and stuff. That's where the real narrative happens.
Ulf: So it's outside but not in the game. This is an attempt to try to solve a bunch of other problems, and one of them is the storytelling part, by introducing a different way of presenting story and content and levels, and how you do that, which is probably what the next press tour will be about, I guess. But yeah, it's been quite challenging, I would say, to get there. And the biggest challenge has been trying to get the team to understand what the fuck we're doing. I think that's still a challenge.
So how did you overcome that challenge? Or how are you trying to overcome the challenge that people not understanding what to do?
Ulf: That's just a grind. You have to grind them down basically. That's about it. I disband teams right and left, that's what I do. That's my job. I kid, because it's true (laughs).
But so you, when you're doing this and you're also building a team at the same time, you have to find constellations of people that work and that function together, both socially and also get the point and can do the stuff. So that's the biggest challenge there—just trying to figure out how that new team functions best.
Because if you approach this the big company way where you go like, “Oh, but the CV says this person is great. This person is a lead for this. Then they can do it.” Like that's never true. So you gotta recruit people, hope for the best, and then try to move people around until you find a working thing, and then you adapt the game to sort of fit that group in a way. That's how we're doing it. It's painful, but it gives results.
Could you briefly walk us through the lore of the game? And why are we shooting Polish mercenaries?
Ulf: Because the Polish are evil, of course! (laughs) No, but seriously — it's actually quite interesting. It ties into the Midway backstory. Midway is a melting pot of different cultures. Simon and I were discussing translation challenges — we have so many locations and characters. Should we have Koreans speak with a Korean accent?
Simon: Should they all speak English? And can we even find people who speak English with an authentic Korean accent? If it’s a private military corporation from Poland, then let them speak Polish. Players who understand Polish will think it’s cool that their language is represented. And for those who don’t speak it, it adds an exotic flair. Like when you go to Little Tokyo or Koreatown in Midway City — everything there is in Japanese or Korean. We wanted to create something that feels more authentic.
Ulf: So using the actual language just makes everything cooler — better, simpler, more natural… and honestly, it’s fucking dope. As for why they’re Polish, it’s because the person who created the branding for that security firm decided they had a Polish background.
Simon: And when we were casting voice actors, we had them speak Polish — just to see how it felt. And it felt fucking awesome.
When we played the pre-alpha version, we had a large printed map of the level available, and we used a marker to plan our approach. How do you plan to handle the planning phase in the full game, considering I assume you won’t be selling the game with physical maps and a developer to help players plan?
Simon: Everyone will need to gather in your apartment. (laughs)
Ulf: Yeah, we’ll send a map and a developer who flies over to your house to explain everything. (laughs) For the press tour, we use this because we need to get everybody on the same page just to attempt playing the extraction. Also, to do the prep work — to understand the game mechanics, the layout, what to do, and why you’re there. We don’t have that much time, and it’s easier to understand it this way.
But for the game, it’s a very similar thing. You have a map in the game, you can put notes on it, you can talk to each other. It’s the people who own the heist, in a sense, that do the planning — and everybody else needs to follow the plan. It’s like a heist movie, where someone is planning the job. It’s more about letting the players set up the plan and then having the others execute it. And there can be multiple players involved in the planning.
How are you handling replayability in the game? Since that is one of the most important aspects of these co-op shooters.
Ulf: A lot of these games have progression systems — Payday is a good example, or Vermintide. Or you end up trying to find the meta, playing the same map, going for the best drops, and then people start calculating the meta online. But that means you end up playing the most boring version of the game — even if it’s a good map. Which is still fine if you’re having fun at the same time.
Simon: But it’s also sad for the game, because you’ve created so much content, and people are only playing this tiny fraction of it.
Ulf: So that’s the shittiest version of the game. What we’re doing instead is setting up what we call a storyline that you basically progress through. So even if one map isn’t the most optimal to play, once you complete it, you move on to the next thing. Then we introduce random elements — so if I play the same storyline again, it will be different. Maps look a bit different, something that was there last time might be gone. Like, we might be looking for a key, and this time it’s not in this map, it’s in another one. We introduce a lot of replayability through that.
Simon: And the players also have choices. For example, if there’s a vault you need to get into, you can find the explosives in one preparation mission, and blueprints in another, to know where to place the explosives. But if you don’t want to go with explosives, you can drill the vault door or something like that. So you have to go to the factory where the door was built to see how it’s structured, and then go somewhere else to get the drill. Or you can threaten the guards to let you in. There are different approaches — and that creates replayability as well, because you can play the storyline several times and try different strategies.
There is a lot more competition in the co-op shooter market nowadays, so how do you want to differentiate yourselves from FBC: Firebreak, upcoming games, or even your previous titles and other companies?
Simon: We’re actually not that bothered, man(laughs). We’re not looking too much at what others are doing.
Robin: Is that the Remedy game?
Yep.
Robin: We are fucked (laughs).
Ulf: If you start focusing too much on other games, you mess up your own. If you stress too much about “they’re making exactly the same thing,” you lose sight of your own vision. It’s always going to be different anyway. What’s trending right now doesn’t matter that much.
Our goal is to have a plan and execute it. If we fuck it up, we fuck it up. But there’s always going to be something better than our game out there, and that’s fine. But we made the hardest one (laughs). As long as the game has some sort of artistic merit—in the sense that we made the thing we wanted to make—I think that’s cool.
The market is pretty big, and the more competition there is, the bigger the market grows. The percentages work out. Also, players keep switching games. You can look at people’s Steam libraries: they might say “Oh, I only play this,” but they actually have 500 games in their collection.
Simon: So, as long as players play Firebreak and also buy our game, it’s fine (laughs).
Ulf: Eventually, someone might make a much better game, and that’s fine. That happens all the time. GTA is out there.
Simon: So the question is: what’s the best game? We want to make a game that’s perfect for a lot of people.
Ulf: And definitely perfect for us. We love co-op games.
Simon: You have to consider that we’ve worked on Payday: The Heist, Payday 2, and GTFO—it’s our wheelhouse, this genre. So we’ll hit the right spot for a lot of people.
Robin: Well, it’s a mix of things. It’s a cool heist game set in the near future. When you put it all together, Firebreak is something completely different, it has its own aesthetic.
Simon: I hadn’t even heard of it. I’m feeling cocky now (laughs).
Ulf: Remedy? Remedy is the best developer, I would say. They’re brilliant and Finnish, so that means we don’t have a chance in that arena (laughs).
But I think we just have to chill. It’s a big market. If we panic and start imitating others, then we’re screwed.
Simon: We want to do our own thing and make something solid that people will enjoy.
You mentioned during the presentation that you switched to a newer Unity engine, Unity 6. What can we expect from that aspect of the game?
Ulf: From what I know about Unity now, they’ve switched to a maintenance and service approach instead of constantly adding flashy new features. They had a period where they promised a lot of new features, but now they’re cleaning things up. So, the engine is more stable and performant. At the same time, not many games have been released using this new tech yet, so you’ll start to see features like ray tracing, more multithreading, generally better performance and nicer graphics.
For the end user, that means better graphics and higher frame rates. Under the hood, there are a lot of improvements that help us do what we do. It’s not the sexiest thing to talk about in terms of features, but it’s what developers want—and in the end, that’s what gamers want, especially for FPS games. They want a tight frame rate.
That’s what we’re aiming for. Of course, it’s always hard to hit perfectly, but I’m hoping for ray tracing myself. I want to have as much ray tracing as possible. I’m too old not to make a ray tracing game! The new hardware is finally out, so I want to push for that.
Simon, any inspirations for the music in the game, and what can we expect thematically?
Simon: I’m just happy to be doing music for a power fantasy, because it’s the kind of music I enjoy the most: very in-your-face, high-adrenaline, electronic music. I couldn’t do that for GTFO, which was a fun challenge but quite different. At first, I was excited, but then it felt like a wet blanket on my psyche because it was really dark for a while. That wasn’t just about the music but also because I chose a technically complex way to do it. It wasn’t necessarily complex for GTFO or any game, but I went down a rabbit hole and now I’m trying to find a technical solution that’s somewhere between that and Payday.
Payday 2’s music implementation is a bit primitive. I don’t know what they’re doing in Payday 3, but Payday 2’s music system is simple, probably because the game design itself is simpler—you can’t go back to stealth and things like that—so it doesn’t require many transitions. I just want the music to kick ass. That’s the main thing.
Ulf: From an outside perspective, I’d say the focus has been on whether we can make a soundtrack out of it—not necessarily aiming for a traditional soundtrack, but whether you can hear a song and say, “Oh, that’s that song.” You can’t really do that with GTFO’s music; it’s less memorable. It’s more fun to make, but less identifiable.
This time, it’s going back to the roots with weird beats and elements, including a bit of trap which is fresh. There’s also a choice of instruments that is sometimes old school and a bit of dirty dissonance. It’s like, once you master something and make everything perfect, then you can break the rules. That’s what it feels like hearing this music—going outside the box a bit. It’s sluggy, dirty, with more meat on the bone.
Simon: Rhythm-wise, it’s slower and heavier than Payday, which mostly sticks around 130 bpm house beats, with some drum and bass and other tempos. This music goes in a different direction, around 100 bpm or even slower, with trap and hip-hop influences. What’s nice is that you can seamlessly double the tempo—from around 75 to 150.
Ulf: One big thing is that we’re not shying away from rap or vocals anymore, which was taboo for us growing up. We don’t give a fuck now.
Simon: I want rap in the game—not necessarily during gameplay, but on the results screen. You’ve heard some rap in this build; that’s me rapping, but it’s not fully rap yet.
How do you cope with having cameras running around you while making a game for the documentary?
Simon: At first, you notice it, but then it becomes an everyday thing. You sort of forget about it.
Ulf: My biggest problem in the beginning was I had to come to work with a pants on (laughs). I couldn’t just do the Daffy Duck like in team meetings or during COVID, when that worked fine. Then I carried that habit into real life.
With the film team, I had to cover up at least a bit, like with a small jockstrap or something. But yeah, you get used to it. Honestly, I love those guys but hate the camera equipment. Sometimes I’m super depressed and just want to say “fuck you guys,” but then we’re looking at it, and the producer goes „That’s good for TV, that guy is super depressed!“.
Robin: They stopped filming me because I was too dark.
Ulf: Oscar (J-T Holm) said it was too depressing. They cut out about 60% of what I said because it was unwatchable. When they showed it to Americans, they said it was too dark, even without me and Robin.
It’s fun in a way. Mentally, it helped to ventilate sometimes, even if you don’t want to. Just saying things to somebody helps a bit. It’s almost like therapy. But yeah, you get used to it. Except the pants thing.