Respawn Entertainment veteran Stig Asmussen has announced the formation of Giant Skull, a new triple-A studio based in LA that was founded to develop the next generation of “gameplay-driven, story-immersed” action-adventure games. Giant Skull is currently working on a single-player-focused action-adventure title, one that is being built in Unreal Engine 5.
Asmussen’s credits include:
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor (Director)
- Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order (Director)
- God of War: Ascension (Artist)
- Mortal Kombat (Director)
- God of War III (Director, Writer)
- God of War: Chains of Olympus (Artist)
- God of War II (Artist)
- God of War (Artist)
Asmussen told GamesIndustry.biz in a new interview about his new venture:
- “I don’t think you need a couple of hundred people to make a AAA game. I don’t know how big we’re going to get, but, especially being able to call our own shots, I think we can make a very successful competitive game with 100 people.”
- “AAA can sometimes mean AAA dollars…but a lot of that depends on how you ramp up your headcount, and how quickly the expectations are that you ship the game. And that can make the game more expensive if you’ve got a lot of people on a long timeline.”
- “EA was a very supportive company. But this opportunity presented itself, and…there was this itch that as soon as I started thinking about it, I just couldn’t shake.”
- “…from day one, it was very important for me, and for this studio, that we’re truly independent, and we have the creative freedom that we need to be our best.”
- “We are single player-focused. That being said, it is early days and we are always looking for opportunities to engage players in different ways.”
Some of Giant Skull’s talent, per Game Informer:
…developers at Giant Skull include chief technology officer Jon Carr, who was the technical director on Jedi Survivor, art director Patrick Murphy, whose resume includes art director on Fortnite and Valorant, lead producer Lauren McLemore, who was a lead producer on Fortnite, and designer director Jeff Magers, who previously handled design on Jedi Survivor and Fallen Order. Giant Skull’s animation director is Brian Campbell, who was a founding member of the Fortnite team at Epic Games and then an animation director there, and the studio’s chief operating and financial officer is Anthony Scott, who has experience running teams such as Rocksteady Studios.