Respawn Entertainment, developer and publisher of the multi-platform battle royale FPS ‘APEX Legend’, announced that it has established a new studio.
This is the opening of Respawn Entertainment’s new studio in Madison, Wisconsin, USA. The headquarters are located in LA, and an additional studio was established in Vancouver, Canada in 2019. Madison Studio will be overseen by Ryan Burnett, who has over 20 years of development experience at Raven Software and Epic Games, and will will initially focus on producing content for Apex Legends.
Raven Software, famous for developing the Call of Duty series, is another FPS specialist in Wisconsin. Respawn Entertainment said in a statement from Daniel Suarez, SVP of Operations and Management: “Ryan Burnett is an outstanding leader with a proven track record of developing live service games, and is a pillar in the large Madison game development community in the Midwest,” he explained.
Currently, Apex Legends is updated every 90 days to add new content to the game. Respawn Entertainment’s position is that it will prepare various updates for a longer period of time through the newly opened Madison studio.
Apex Legends game director Steven Ferreira told gamesindustry.biz, “Setting up the Wisconsin studio is part of building a never-ending cycle of live services, and it’s something we’ve never attempted before. It will enable us to take on new challenges.” It is interpreted as an attempt to infuse more fresh vitality into the game by recruiting talents with different experiences and backgrounds to those of existing studios.
In addition, he said the role of the Wisconsin studio is important in mitigating the crunch (the act of continuous work for a long time before the deadline) that can occur during a continuous live service. The Apex Legends update cycle maintains an interval of 90 days, but in the case of some update elements, there are long-term projects that require at least one to two years to produce. He explains that it is also important to distribute the work of the development personnel in order to grow into a franchise that will last for more than 15 years.
Meanwhile, Daniel Suarez, Respawn’s SVP of Operations and Management, celebrated the opening of the new studio and said, “The core of this expansion symbolizes the meeting’s commitment to working with some of the most skilled and curious creative talent in the industry. ” Our goal is to continue to make Apex Legends the best battle royale game ever, and if Madison’s extremely talented developers work together with the Los Angeles and Vancouver teams to achieve that goal, this expansion will be worth it in itself, “he said.
