Amy Hennig has announced a plan to open a new studio. The successful writer and director will open said new studio in collaboration with Skydance Media (via GameSpot).
The focus of the projects undertaken within this new venture will be “to explore new frontiers in interactive storytelling,” says Hennig’s announcement. Hennig will be joined by veteran EA producer Julian Beak to help lead the effort. Beak has worked with Hennig for much of their shared career, on titles like LittleBigPlanet, Battlefield, and many more. Skydance CEO David Ellison called the two “creative and visionary leaders” in the emerging landscape of today’s entertainment.
The new company will target both gaming and non-gaming audiences with their offerings. In an interview with GamesBeat, Hennig said that the goal was to craft “an interactive series[. . .] that will employ state-of-the-art computer graphics to provide the visual fidelity of television and film.” some are suspecting this could also mean a leaning into new platforms like Google Stadia. One thing is sure though, this new project will have some killer writing.
“There’s so much pressure to create these monolith games that are so huge and more focused on live services and open the world aspects. Which are great, right?,”added Hennig. “But my sweet spot is authored narrative. And so, what I was looking at, as I was doing my tour of industry, was—everything I heard from my gamer friends—that we want that content. That is what we are missing, the kind of shorter form, focused, narrative interactive content.”
With the emergence of Google Stadia and xCloud, there is some room for growth with new gaming experiences and innovative delivery methods. It’s questionable to what degree this sector can bear new talent and studios though. Stadia has been hounded on launch due to a variety of technical issues. The slim launch lineup and issues with framerate and resolution were widely reported, and it makes many suspicious of the future of the project. So if there are plans to engage with cloud-based gaming, there may be some waiting time involved while the idea matures.
Although if anyone can successfully create engaging stories for new platforms, it’s someone with more than 30 years of industry experience. Hennig has garnered many well-deserved awards over the years for her excellent writing and other work.
“The interactive media landscape is continually changing and Amy and Julian are creative and visionary leaders of this evolution,” said David Ellison, CEO of Skydance Media, in a statement. “Together, we will create within this new sphere the same type of event-level entertainment experiences that Skydance is known for in features and television.”
No details yet on what their projects will look like or when they will be available, so I guess the wait begins.
