Home Cartoon budget GI Joe Goes Triple A With New Game Led By Former WB Devs

GI Joe Goes Triple A With New Game Led By Former WB Devs

0

Think of this as a public service announcement big enough for Flint, Gung-Ho, and Alpine to host it: GI Joe, one of America’s oldest comic and cartoon series, finally looks set to return to console video games in a major way.

Magic: The Gathering Creators Wizards of the Coast are creating a new game in the franchise with former developers at WB Games, the first project of a new, as yet unnamed, triple-A studio. As noted in several job postings on its career page, the company is looking to fill positions within the development company, currently known as “New Raleigh-Durham Studio,” for a third-person cross-platform action game. drop down “in the GI Joe universe”.

Wizards, a division of Hasbro (which also owns the GI Joee brand), says the developer is run by veteran, veteran staff at WB Games and other major studios, though listings suggest he’s still hiring for some senior roles, including game designer. principal and artistic director.

While none of the lists go into too much detail, the chief game designer announcement mentions that applicants need experience with Unreal Engine, while, perhaps more interestingly, the art director page mentions “the opportunity to help redefine a beloved PI.”

A reason to be optimistic for this teaser GI Joe The game comes from Wizards’ recent efforts to get into the triple A space with its own properties. The company released Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance earlier this year, which met with poor reviews, but showed promise in its design and production value rather than feeling like a cheap mobile port.

Hasbro announced plans to develop digital games for a number of its properties at an investor event in February. This, combined with the opening of a new triple A studio ladder, indicates the company is taking the GI Joe name more seriously than it has been in some time, which should be a no-brainer to fill the relative void in the E-10 rated action game play.

True American Zero?

The GI Joe The brand could also use a reset given its recent media lapses. The theatrical fallout of this summer Snake-eyes tanked at the box office on pandemic difficulty. Meanwhile, last year’s third-person shooter Operation GI Joe blackout, which sported a cel-shaded, Fortnite-look esque, doesn’t fare much better. The beloved comic and cartoon series has been relegated primarily to smartphone games over the past decade, with Operation Blackout being the first GI Joe console version of any kind since 2009 GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra link with the film. (Before that, the last time the Joes were heavily involved in games was in 1992, in an eponymous arcade game from Konami and the NES. GI Joe: The Atlantis Factor.)

Reading between the lines, Wizards hiring former WB Games developers to apparently run their Raleigh-Durham studio can offer some clues as to the state of the games division at Warner Bros.

Questions have circulated around Warner Bros. ‘ development arm — currently working on games like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and Harry potter spin off Hogwarts Legacy– since WarnerMedia (formerly Time-Warner Inc.) was acquired by AT&T in 2018. The media company was subsequently hit with massive layoffs as part of a corporate restructuring in August 2020, which led to industry to speculate that Warner Bros. Interactive could be sold.

AT&T announced in May its intention to separate WarnerMedia as a separate company as part of a merger with Discovery. Meanwhile, the WB’s big-budget triple-A games list was almost entirely absent from the company’s E3 announcements in June. Instead, the company only offered an update on the upcoming game. Back 4 Blood. (Mortal combat‘s NetherRealm and Shadow of Mordor‘s Monolith has also been a mom for some time.)

In a statement during its restructuring, AT&T said WB Interactive remains in the family. But gleaning concrete information about the current state of its studios or its development projects has been difficult since then. All of this to say that this new studio showcasing former WB Games executives as part of its leadership could have bigger implications.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here