Giant Skull, the AAA game development studio founded in 2014 by former God of War and Star Wars Jedi director Stig Asmussen, announced in June that it had signed a deal with Wizards of the Coast to make a new action/adventure game based on the Dungeons & Dragons license. The deal was facilitated by Asmussen having previously worked with John Hight, now president of Wizards of the Coast.
In an interview with The Game Business, Asmussen revealed that it is not his plan to grow Giant Skull into a large studio, though they will use outsourcing to compensate.
We're still small. I think right now we're 35 people and we don't plan on growing much more for a long period of time. I don't see us becoming like a massive team. I don't want to get to the point where it's unwieldy or anything like that. I think that with the tools that we have, the brain power that we have, the experience that we have, we can get a lot done with a small team. Doesn't mean that we're going to be a tiny team or anything like that, but we're never going to get massive. That's not what Giant Skull is about.
We're going to use every single tool in the box. If you don't outsource a lot, you're going to get left in the dust in this industry, but you got to make sure you find the right partners and your minds are aligned and everything and we've already started that process and we're collaborating with some great outsourcing partners.
They'll also get the help of Wizards of the Coast, which has established a team of artists that will work on various premium games based on their licenses, according to John Hight.
One thing we're doing with our premium games is they're all built on Unreal Engine 5 and we're establishing a content creation team to help service teams. We make fantasy games, we make sci-fi games, so we're going to have a team of artists and worldbuilders that can help out and, you know, step in if Stig wants to use them during that time when we're in full production. It balances things out a lot better, because if you've got really talented artists and they're part of your team when you're in early concept development and you're waiting for them to engage, they can get bored. It can get very costly for a studio to do that. What we want to do is balance that a little bit by having a content team that can help augment. I don't know that all publishers do that, but we're fortunate because a lot of our games are in the same space. We can build a talent team that's really good at doing fantasy art and they can work on a variety of projects.
Giant Skull won't be rushed by Wizards of the Coast to make this game, though. Hight said he expects Asmussen and his team to be still working on it in three years, so buckle in for a long ride.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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