Drew McCoy and John Shiring, most known for their work on games like Titanfall, Titanfall 2, and Apex Legends, have left Reswpan Entertainment in favor to develop their own studio called Gravity Well. The two claim to have opened the studio to work on the develop AAA games with the idea of delivering “bold new ideas exclusively for next-gen hardware and PCs.” As of now, the pair are supposedly working on their studio remotely due to COVID-19 with plans to expand into a formal studio space in the future.
In their announcement, Shiring notes that the two were not happy with how large their original team had become. “Ask around, and you’ll get the same answer from devs – once your team size crosses 100 people, everything changes. It’s nobody’s fault – big organizations just move slowly. You need meetings just to make decisions. Choices get siloed and brilliant creatives become less creative. So let’s just not do that. We’re going to build a team that is 80-85 people at peak.” One of the most important aspects of Gravity Well is the ability to work from home in the future.
In his online announcement, McCoy says, “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.” By keeping this studio at this size, Gravity Well is also hoping to mediate the level of creative risks and develop more dynamic and inspired games (also noting that they are not happy with the kind of low-risk projects that receive funding nowadays).
Currently, Gravity Well is looking for developers, artists, managers, and more. All of these openings and the information relating to them can be found on the studio’s official website.