Drew McCoy and Jon “Slothy” Shiring, the former executive producer and lead programmer of Apex Legends respectively, have left Respawn Entertainment to set up their own studio.
The new studio is located in Los Angeles and is called Gravity Well. McCoy explains that they are starting a new studio because they value how they want to make games. “We want time to iterate on everything and get ideas and feedback from the entire team,” says the programmer. He emphasizes that the team will come first and that the health of the team is the ‘absolute top priority’. “That means we’re anti-crunch. That means good compensation and everyone at Gravity Well has creative freedom because the work isn’t fun and the outcome isn’t as good when someone else makes all the decisions,” McCoy said.
Shiring explains that a relative small scale will form the basis of Gravity Well. That means a team of at most 80 to 85 people. He argues that a widely held view among developers is that a team of more than 100 people changes dramatically, with things moving slowly and meetings are needed just to make decisions. Shiring argues that in that situation choices are shielded and very creative people become less creative. “We’re not satisfied with the low level of creative risk that funding is emerging for today. We want to explore bold new ideas exclusively for next-generation hardware and PCs.”
In view of the covid-19 pandemic, the new studio will start with working from home as a basis. Shiring says diversity is a core value of Gravity Well and that working from home means there will be no restrictions on relocations or issues with work visas. He states that he wants to attract the best talent in the industry, regardless of where the applicant lives.
The two developers have been making games together for about fourteen years. In addition to being responsible for Apex Legends, they also worked on the two Titanfall games, 2007’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Modern Warfare 2.
Titanfall 2