todd-alderman
Latest
Beat and shoot-em-up in former Titanfall, God of War devs' To The Death
Indie developers Scary Mostro and Section Studios launched their Kickstarter campaign for To The Death today. The game combines beat-em-up and arcade shooter elements together, as players control one of two warriors that are dashing towards one another, hacking away at everything in their path. As To The Death's story goes, the warriors killed each other and are now stuck in The Crawl, a purgatory-like world between life and death. The two studios are led by developers with a deep history in the industry, with To The Death's game design and engineering coming from Scary Mostro's Todd Alderman and Francesco Gigliotti. Both Alderman and Gigliotti are credited as lead designer and engineer respectively at Infinity Ward on the Call of Duty series, and later worked on Titanfall for Respawn Entertainment. Likewise, To The Death's art direction comes from Section Studios Creative Director Cecil Kim, visual development lead for God of War 3. To The Death is in development for PC, Mac and Linux with early access tentatively planned for August. Scary Mostro and Section Studios are seeking $400,000 by February 19 to fund its development.
Infinity Ward lead designer now Respawn lead designer [update]
The LinkedIn profile (login required) of former Infinity Ward Lead Designer Todd Alderman, one of the 2015 Inc. staffers who left to form Infinity Ward, reveals that he has signed on as the Lead Game Designer for the new Respawn Entertainment. Hey, don't some other guys from Infinity Ward work at Respawn now? What a happy coincidence! Though we all assumed that departing Infinity Ward staffers would join up with the new studio headed by Vince Zampella and Jason West -- of their own volition, of course, and not through "active soliciting" from Respawn, since the new developer is legally barred from such activity -- this is the first indication of such a thing actually taking place. So now the company has at least three employees. That's enough to make a AAA game, right? Each person only has to work on one "A." Update: G4 is keeping a running tally of the former IW-ers joining Respawn. It's now up to six, including animators, artists, and programmers. [Via G4]
Rumor: Infinity Ward loses two development leads
According to an unnamed source "close to the studio" who spoke with Kotaku, lead designer Todd Alderman and lead software engineer Francesco ("Frank") Gigliotti recently resigned from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 development house Infinity Ward. Alderman's LinkedIn profile (seen after the break) corroborates that April was apparently his last month of employment with the studio, though Gigliotti's LinkedIn account appears to be unavailable at this point in time (Kotaku has an alleged screengrab of Gigliotti's profile that appears to legitimize the claim). This report comes just weeks after studio co-heads Vince Zampella and Jason West vacated their positions at Infinity Ward, filed a lawsuit against Activision, and headed for the Creative Artists Agency in Hollywood. We've asked Activision and Infinity Ward for an official response and will let you know if we hear anything back.
