Former Call of Duty, Gears of War devs join Bleszinski's new studio

Last week industry veteran Cliff Bleszinski (Jazz Jackrabbit, Gears of War) publicly launched his new studio, Boss Key Productions, and announced its first project: a free-to-play Nexon-published PC shooter currently known as Project Bluestreak. The studio now seems to be rapidly filling its ranks with veteran developers, most of whom have experience in the AAA shooter market. GamesBeat reports that two former Call of Duty developers have joined Boss Key in the wake of Neversoft's demise: animator Ryan Palser and UI artist David Rose, both of whom previously worked on Call of Duty: Ghosts. They join recent Boss Key hire Joshua Parker, an experienced gameplay programmer who previously worked at Ubisoft's Red Storm studio, where he helped ship Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Several of Bleszinski's former cohorts have already joined Boss Key, including concept artist Jay Hawkins, character artist/modeler Chris Wells and manager/producer Chris Mielke. All of them previously worked on titles in the Gears of War franchise, and now they're presumably working on Boss Key's inaugural project. In a recent Reddit AMA thread, Bleszinski described the new studio as a "lean startup" that wouldn't grow to more than 15 to 20 people in its first year of operation. Bleszinski went on to pitch Boss Key as a studio where developers could "actually make an impact instead of being crushed under the cycle of the Big E3 Sequel reveal and inevitable annualization," a pitch that resonates more strongly now that so much of the studio is comprised of developers who have shipped one or more AAA game sequels.