As some Triangle game studios cut staff – or even shut down – a stealthy video game developer owned by toy giant Hasbro (Nasdaq: HAS) is doubling down on the Triangle, expanding its space and hiring developers as it reaches a key milestone.
Ames Kirshen, studio general manager and creative director for Atomic Arcade in Research Triangle Park, said his team is at 31 employees and growing. That’s why, in January, the plan is to take on an additional 3,000 square feet of space at its existing offices next to the Hub RTP development.
The firm is working on a G.I. Joe game, and recently entered pre-production.
While Atomic Arcade still isn’t releasing many details about the game itself, pre-production is a critical phase of development, where the team must build out the foundation of the game, expected to be an 18-month process.
At the end of pre-production, the team will have a “vertical slice,” a demonstration of the actual game.
“We take an element of the game, a specific corner of the game, so to speak, and we build it out to near shippable quality to test our pipelines, to test our assumptions, to get our first round of user testing,” Kirshen said, calling it a “really big litmus test for us.”
Pre-production started in July and is expected to last through the end of next year.
“It’s a huge endeavor,” he said.
It will require more heads. Right now, the studio has five open roles, but more are expected to drop before the holidays.
Kirshen said the company is seeing an uptick in resume submissions due to layoffs at other game studios.
The Triangle’s biggest name in video games, Cary-based Epic Games, confirmed more than 800 layoffs last week. Tim Sweeney, CEO of the “Fortnite” developer, told employees in an all-staff letter that the firm had been “spending way more than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic and growing Fortnite as a metaverse-inspired ecosystem for creators.”
But Epic wasn’t alone.
On Tuesday, Puny Human LLC, a game developer in Raleigh, announced a “near-total shutdown of operations” including layoffs. The move eliminates about 20 local jobs and, according to a statement by CEO and Studio Manager Mike Sanders, is the result of a client refusing previously agreed-upon payments, “which deprived us of the cash flow to fully pitch our in-progress title and triggered successive failures in our operating income.”
Atomic Arcade has the faith of Hasbro – but pressure is high with pre-production. Atomic Arcade is one of the studios that makeup Wizards of the Coast, a division of Hasbro. So far, “they’re excited about what we’re doing,” Kirshen said. That means the owners are willing to bankroll the growth to get the new game, described as an AAA GI Joe Snake Eyes game, off the ground.
Kirshen said that to make their resume stand out, job candidates need to demonstrate “what you bring to the table on top of nuts and bolts of your experience.”
“Cultural fit is really important to us,” he said.
Atomic Arcade is not the only studio hiring. Red Storm Entertainment had multiple open roles listed on its website. The Cary firm is preparing to launch Assassin’s Creed Nexus on Meta Quest.