The Initiative Hires Former Kojima/Sony Santa Monica God Of War Level Designer And More

They just keep going...


https://www.videogameschronicle.com...gns-yet-more-experience-from-respawn-bioware/


The studio’s most recent hires include senior Apex Legends designer Sean Slayback, BioWare lead animator Ryan Duffin, Uncharted 4 artist Ryan Trowbridge and Doom 2016 environment artist Justin Walters, according to LinkedIn.

The four follow a group of God of War designersthrough the doors of the growing Xbox studio.

Microsoft is building an experienced team at The Initiative, led by game director Daniel Neuburger, who was a game director on the Tomb Raider series, and lead designer Drew Murray, who held the same role on Insomniac’s Sunset Overdrive.

The studio’s director of production, Brian Westergaard, also worked on God of War as senior managing producer.

Fiona Cherbak, the former talent acquisition lead at Sony Interactive Entertainment Worldwide Studios, recently joined Microsoft to help with its expansion of Xbox Game Studios, with a focus on staffing up The Initiative.
 
It takes time to put a AAA development team together. I’m not expecting anything from the Initiative for at least another 4 years if I’m honest but they’re certainly hiring some very talented devs that’s for sure.
 

""I don’t want to get into too much, particularly with our showcase coming up, in terms of what The Initiative is doing. But I’ll just say that obviously we spent a lot of time talking with them and reviewing and seeing what’s going on. I think people are going to be pretty excited when we start to talk about what’s going on there."
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Edge BC
I've long had a theory that the reason that The Initiative has so many creative leads yet a small studio is that they're a Microsoft experiment. When they started, they said they were going to be an innovative studio. I don't think that was only referring to their game. I believe it was referring to how they develop games. I believe they are an ideation and management team who'll outsource nearly all their development. Probably more than 1 game in the pipeline right now.

Clues:
  • They've barely hired any developers outside of the creative leads. Every other Microsoft studio is consistently posting jobs and adding people through LinkedIn.
  • ...yet somehow they were able to show Spencer a vertical slice of a game
  • ...and there's been rumors that Microsoft is doing some new interesting things in regards to game development while investing a ton of money
  • ...and there's rumors they've outsourced thousands of developers
I believe in the long run, you're going to see more of this from Microsoft. Smaller creative teams who either outsource their development or borrow from a pool of devs who support all Microsoft studios.
 
  • Like
Reactions: karmakid
I've long had a theory that the reason that The Initiative has so many creative leads yet a small studio is that they're a Microsoft experiment. When they started, they said they were going to be an innovative studio. I don't think that was only referring to their game. I believe it was referring to how they develop games. I believe they are an ideation and management team who'll outsource nearly all their development. Probably more than 1 game in the pipeline right now.

Clues:
  • They've barely hired any developers outside of the creative leads. Every other Microsoft studio is consistently posting jobs and adding people through LinkedIn.
  • ...yet somehow they were able to show Spencer a vertical slice of a game
  • ...and there's been rumors that Microsoft is doing some new interesting things in regards to game development while investing a ton of money
  • ...and there's rumors they've outsourced thousands of developers
I believe in the long run, you're going to see more of this from Microsoft. Smaller creative teams who either outsource their development or borrow from a pool of devs who support all Microsoft studios.

they, said leads, are already familiar with their former studios using outsourced creatives heavily
 
  • Like
Reactions: OneBadMutha
More designers. Still haven't hired coders. I think the Initiative is an experiment in how to build a studio. Small teams leading big projects. For all those people complaining about 343 outsourcing, wait until you get a load of everyone else under Xbox 1st party.

On a real positive note, if Initiative can manage this and be successful, it gives Microsoft a lot of agility in spinning up AAA games in the future.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: karmakid
More designers. Still haven't hired coders. I think the Initiative is an experiment in how to build a studio. Small teams leading big projects. For all those people complaining about 343 outsourcing, wait until you get a load of everyone else under Xbox 1st party.

On a real positive note, if Initiative can manage this and be successful, it gives Microsoft a lot of agility in spinning up AAA games in the future.

mis it moon studios or another notable studio that has no actual physical studio and they all work from different states and country?
 
Playtesting began a year ago. We posted that same tweet on this forum before.

sheepish_aladdin.gif
 
  • Haha
Reactions: Edge BC
mis it moon studios or another notable studio that has no actual physical studio and they all work from different states and country?

Yep but most of the people working on their game work for the studio. Regardless, Moon is a great example of what studios can be in the future. Having designers and talented creatives working on the same game despite living in different countries offers a lot of creative flexibility and ability to stack creatives for a single game. Now combine that with the fast evolution of tools both for remote work and game development and today's environment where everyone is working remote, you no longer have to employ those people to keep remote pipelines working efficiently. It's just a matter of learning how manage creatives that work for you and the revolving door of coders. Once dev kits are in the cloud (which Microsoft will move to) the barriers to assemble great teams will be lowered even more.
 
Is it possible for Phil to try out their new game without any coding?

cpV24sggakviVWqWwDVzJn-650-80.jpg.webp

Which is my point. Coding got done. They haven't hired many. I think they may have multiple games in development right now with all the designers they hired, lack of coders and a playable build.
 
Yep but most of the people working on their game work for the studio. Regardless, Moon is a great example of what studios can be in the future. Having designers and talented creatives working on the same game despite living in different countries offers a lot of creative flexibility and ability to stack creatives for a single game. Now combine that with the fast evolution of tools both for remote work and game development and today's environment where everyone is working remote, you no longer have to employ those people to keep remote pipelines working efficiently. It's just a matter of learning how manage creatives that work for you and the revolving door of coders. Once dev kits are in the cloud (which Microsoft will move to) the barriers to assemble great teams will be lowered even more.

you think they continue what they did with the one and allow all Xs to be used as dev units?
 
you think they continue what they did with the one and allow all Xs to be used as dev units?

Not sure the details of how. At the game Stack conference they were talking about running ML models overnight at capacity not possible locally. I think eventually game development for Microsoft will all be in the cloud. Maybe they keep local dev kits as backup.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: karmakid
Which is my point. Coding got done. They haven't hired many. I think they may have multiple games in development right now with all the designers they hired, lack of coders and a playable build.
Oh, I thought you were saying that they haven't even coded a line of the game and that they are just doing artwork, poster boards and it would be like 10 years before we see anything.
 
Oh, I thought you were saying that they haven't even coded a line of the game and that they are just doing artwork, poster boards and it would be like 10 years before we see anything.

Lol. I could see how it would sound like I said that. I think their first game may be further in development than most people suspect actually.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Kvally