Some big names that just left google to join haven studio. Thanks for Cyberia for pointing these out in Sony FP thread.
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Head of Creative Services and Publishing & General Manager of Google's Stadia Games alongside others leave to join haven studio
- Thread starter Kolx
- Start date
Some big names that just left google to join haven studio. Thanks for Cyberia for pointing these out in Sony FP thread.
That's not surprising. Good to see that they felt that partnership was worth continuing and that they still want to make games. That's good news :D. The question is whether they make something that is trying to push the limits of tech and make use of things like streaming (probably not?) or something in a different direction altogether.
I mean.. what does an Insights Director do.. exactly..?
I mean.. what does an Insights Director do.. exactly..?
Wow, so was it really like "Oh look, Microsoft bought Zenimax, so let's cancel/phase out Stadia"?
I think it was happening regardless, but couple the pandemic with lower than expected results for Stadia, Walmart and Tencent waiting in the wings, Luna launching and Xbox doubling their first party and I think Google realized the costs of trying to disrupt a market like gaming, especially when one of its incumbents has significant reason to want to expand its cloud gaming capabilities.
I think it was more around finally understanding how tough the battle would be, and how uncertain the outcome would be.
I'd say the crazy demand for the next gen consoles also played a part. Hard to keep happily chugging along on a cloud-only solution when the market's going crazy for conventional consoles.
The prior experience revolves around user research, so audience/market/player research and data and stuff.
So I guess Stadia will eventually shutter their store and instead try to offer their tech and servers to other players in the industry. But I'm having a hard time imagining who will be interested. MS obviously not. Sony recently made a deal with MS for use of their Azure stack for its cloud gaming services, so they might be off the table as well. Amazon has their own tech and servers. Most other publishers like EA or Activision aren't big enough to compete with MS, I feel. That leaves Nvidia. Nvidia does have their own tech, but they might be interested in Google's server network. Even so, I kinda feel that Google is unlikely to get great terms from Nvidia.
I think that tells us a lot about how Google see Stadia as an ongoing concern.
I bet because they closed it more sudden and did not let them even come out with a first project that all went out the window.
Maybe she got an offer like hey here is 6 months worth of pay or leave now have do whatever you want.
And since Jade can work anywhere in the industry I get she was like get out of here and start my own thing.
It doesn't look like they're going to be needing a "head of creative services and publishing" anyways. So, why bother?
That's a hard thing to do in a non-regulated industry and you could probably only achieve that in one region/country. That doesn't include the fact that some studios, in the same state and company, just don't have same titles; Naughty Dog doesn't have producers (the team leads fill this position) while Santa Monica basically has a small army of producers and assistant producers.
They are working on a Sony game, like Kojima Productions did with Death Stranding.
Yeah. This tells me that Google doesn't mind talent leaving Stadia. They've made peace with changing direction drastically.
Yeah. But typically your contract has exit clauses and typically poaching until a period of time after your exit is a no-no, otherwise exiting leaders might poach an entire team that they are comfortable working with.
Only a matter of time before Stadia leaves itself behind to form a new studio working on non-Stadia projects.
Very true that typically it does.
But in this case it seems that they do not care at all and they are all just allowed to join Jade studio like that.
True, but sometimes (at least in my case) it has to do with geography. If these folks are in San Francisco or LA, but Haven is in Montreal the non-compete agreement clause is unenforceable given the distance involved. In the event they were leaving one LA studio for another down the road, yeah that could fall into some legal problems. Who knows.
4 more former Google Stadia devs:
- Louis-Philippe Dion --> Audio Director
- Sacha Viltofsky --> Technical Director
- Tuan Thanh Truong --> Level Artist
- Jonathan Eve --> Senior Game Designer