A pair of former developers from Blizzard Entertainment have formed their own studio, Gas Giant Games. Both of the co-founders, Jay Wilson and Julian Love, previously worked on the developer’s Diablo franchise.
Wilson was the director of 2012’s Diablo III and later departed Blizzard (and the entire game industry) in 2016. When he left, he said it was to pursue writing, which he had called his “original passion.” Love, meanwhile, departed Blizzard in late 2021, and had previously been a combat designer for Diablo Immortal and the incoming Diablo IV.
At Gas Giant, Love will be the creative director, while Wilson will be its design director. Both men told VentureBeat their staff has developers who’ve worked on games such as Cyberpunk 2077, Kingdom Hearts, and their former studio’s Overwatch.
They further revealed the studio’s debut project will be an original action-RPG. The studio is planning to offer previews of that project at next week’s Game Developer’s Conference to interest publishers and investors. Unlike most newly-formed studios, Gas Giant didn’t disclose if it received seed money from specific venture funds.
Game Developer has previously spoken to both Wilson and Love in the past about game development, and the Diablo franchise in particular. Here are Love’s 2013 thoughts on implementing Diablo III’s visual effects, and here’s a 2015 postmortem from Wilson on making the game, from including the lessons learned during early struggles.
The 2023 Game Developer’s Conference will run from March 20 to March 24 in San Francisco.
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