While we’re in the midst of an on-going global pandemic with the COVID-19 situation, that hasn’t stopped former Infinity Ward (Call of Duty) and Respawn Entertainment (Titanfall) devs Drew McCoy and Jon Shiring to launch their own AAA studio named “Gravity Well.”
Both devs have a message to say to the gaming community.
A STUDIO FOR THE LONG HAUL
Hi! I’m Drew, and I’m stoked to start a new studio here in LA with Slothy. We’ve been making games together for a long time and have learned a ton about ways to lead teams and ship games. We believe the time is right to shake things up in AAA game dev.
We are starting a studio because of how we want to make games. We want time to iterate on everything and get ideas and feedback from the whole team. We’re building this studio to last for decades, and that doesn’t happen without putting the team first.
We take team health as an absolute top priority. That means we are anti-crunch. That means good compensation. That means everyone at Gravity Well has creative freedom, because when someone else makes all of the decisions, work isn’t fun and the end product isn’t as good.
We prefer to cut and focus down so we only ship what we love.
If this sounds like an adventure that you want to join we’re looking forward to hearing from you!
Okay, Slothy here. I just pried the keyboard away from Drew.
Ask around, and you’ll get the same answer from devs – once your team size crosses 100 people, everything changes. It’s nobody’s fault – big organizations just move slowly. You need meetings just to make decisions. Choices get siloed and brilliant creatives become less creative. So let’s just not do that. We’re going to build a team that is 80-85 people at peak.
We aren’t satisfied with the low level of creative risk that gets project funding these days. We want to explore bold new ideas exclusively for next-gen hardware and PCs.
Given the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re starting the studio for remote work from the very start. Since one of the core values of Gravity Well is increased diversity, we’re excited about not being hamstrung by relocation or work visa issues. We want to hire the best talent in the industry, regardless of where you live.
We’re excited to build this new team and we hope that you’re interested, too. If now isn’t the right time, reach out anyway and we can just have a nice conversation. If you work in games, we’d love to hear from you.
– Jon “Slothy” Shiring
The studio is also hiring for multiple positions, which you can check out on the official website.
Given the two founders’ pedigree in making online multiplayer shooters, don’t be surprised if their debut project is in the same genre. Needless to say, we here at MP1st are very excited to see what comes of this new venture and wish them all the best!