jasonrubin
Latest
'Uncharted' creative director Amy Hennig is going indie
Amy Hennig, former writer and creative director of the Uncharted series for PlayStation's Naughty Dog studio, is striking out on her own. After EA shut down Visceral Games she left the company in January to start her "own little independent studio," according to GamesIndustry.biz. "I would love to have a little company of about six to eight people, 15 at the most, and then do smaller projects," she told journalists gathered at Barcelona's Gamelab.
Gear VR was the 'Evolve' and 'Left 4 Dead' studio's savior
"Chaotic." That's how Turtle Rock Studios president Steve Goldstein described the 14 months between its last AAA game, Evolve, being effectively killed and now. The four-hunter-versus-one-gigantic-monster online multiplayer game struggled to retain players after it was released for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in early 2015. Last June, Evolve transitioned from a $60 game to a free-to-play one. As a result, it went from roughly 100 players per month to more than 15,000. You'd think that would have been enough to keep the lights on, but you'd be wrong. Four months later, publisher 2K Games pulled the plug, saying that while the servers would remain online for the foreseeable future, the game wouldn't be getting any more updates. "It was absolutely looking bleak, but sadly that's not unusual in our space," Goldstein said. "Everyone who works here knows that they are taking a risk, right? That's not a problem unique to us." If all you've paid attention to are headlines on gaming and tech news sites, you'd think that Turtle Rock has been on the ropes ever since. But in the last year or so, thanks to Oculus' aggressive investments in virtual reality games and other experiences, Turtle Rock has been quietly building a mobile VR safety net in case its next $100 million project goes the way of Evolve.
Oculus claims exclusive games are good for the VR industry
Many have argued -- including our own Sean Buckley -- that the steady stream of platform-exclusive virtual reality games is a bad thing. Oculus has been by the far the most aggressive in pursuing such deals, but its head of content Jason Rubin claims that this is a good thing for the industry. In an interview with gamesindustry.biz, Rubin made an argument focused on the growth of the industry. He compared the VR industry to PC gaming in the '80s, noting that the market is similar in size. The problem, he asserted, is one of expectation. "The average gamer is now aware of $100 million games. And while we certainly cannot build a $100 million game that takes four years, in the year we've had dev kits, we can try to get closer to that by funding significant leaps beyond the financial certainty that a developer would need to have to do it on their own."
Oculus nabs co-founder of 'Uncharted' developer
More than a few people (including one absurdly rich 30 year old) think that the Oculus Rift is going to change the world. As it turns out, that list just got a little longer today: former THQ president and Naughty Dog co-founder Jason Rubin is joining the Oculus mothership as its head of worldwide studios. What exactly does that involve? Rubin painted us a picture (with broad strokes, alas) in a post on the official Oculus blog: "I'm excited to bring together a new division dedicated to building high-quality VR content that helps define the platform and inspire others to do the same."
