Bohemia Interactive creative director leaves for Czech rival Madfinger

After twenty years with the cult Czech studio Bohemia Interactive, creative director Ivan Buchta is leaving the company to join Brno-based Madfinger Games, where he will work on the ambitious project Gray Zone Warfare. Such a move is considered rare in the Czech games industry — especially when it means leaving a billion-crown business.

Bohemia Interactive is one of the flagships of the Czech games industry, known worldwide for its Arma series of military simulators and the zombie survival hit DayZ. For the seventh year running, the company has generated revenue in the billions of crowns and is steadily approaching the two-billion-crown mark. Buchta shaped the studio's creative direction for thirteen years, having joined the company in 2006 and taken over as creative director in 2013.

He is now moving full-time to Madfinger Games, a Brno-based studio developing the realistic tactical shooter Gray Zone Warfare — the very genre that made Bohemia Interactive famous. “I was drawn to the project's potential and the ambition behind it,” Buchta explains his decision.

Madfinger Games still can't match Bohemia Interactive in revenue or profit, but the studio, led by Marek Rabas, made a bold bet: a few years ago it sold off its profitable mobile games business and switched entirely to tactical online shooters. The move paid off — after the release of Gray Zone Warfare, the studio posted the most successful year in its history, with profit exceeding 400 million crowns, and recently announced that the game had sold 1.7 million copies.

“I'm thrilled that Ivan has joined our team. He has decades of experience creating well-crafted military games, and his expertise fits perfectly with the vision we have for Gray Zone Warfare,” Rabas commented on the move. At the new company, Buchta will hold the position of associate creative director.

Beyond his professional achievements, Buchta is known to the wider public for a 2012 incident in which he and colleague Martin Pezlár spent four months in a Greek pre-trial detention facility — local authorities suspected espionage after their photo trip to the island of Lemnos, which had inspired the creators of Arma 3. Top Czech political figures, including President Václav Klaus, got involved in the case; the developers faced up to twenty years in prison but ultimately received an 18-month suspended sentence.

Buchta plans to apply the experience he gained working on Arma, known for its authentic depiction of modern conflict, and DayZ, built around online player rivalry and cooperation, to the new project as well. “Madfinger has laid a solid foundation for a tactical sandbox world with systems that can be developed further. I can't wait to bring my experience to the table and help shape the future direction of Gray Zone Warfare,” the developer concludes.