In February, Apex Legends executive producer Drew McCoy left Respawn Entertainment after a ten-year stretch that also earned him producer credits on Titanfall and Titanfall 2. He didn't say what he'd be getting up to next, but assured his followers on Twitter that he wouldn't be able to stay away from games for long.
He sure wasn't kidding: McCoy and former Apex Legends lead software engineer Jon Shiring (who actually left Respawn a little ahead of McCoy) announced today that they've launched a new studio called Gravity Well, and that they hope to "shake things up" in big-budget game development.
"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," McCoy wrote at gravitywell.games.
"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."
That approach to development seems to fit with McCoy's time on Apex Legends at Respawn. While Epic Games has come under fire for the brutal crunch required to support its big battle royale Fortnite, Respawn has stuck to seasonal updates on Apex Legends, in part to avoid overloading and burning out its employees.
"I think you look at quality of life for the team," CEO Vince Zampella said in 2019. "We don’t want to overwork the team, and drop the quality of the assets we’re putting out. We want to try and raise that.”
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