Black Designer Black Heading Up Codemasters Shooter

Stuart Black, a senior designer on Criterion Games' 2006 first-person shooter Black, is now heading up a new shooter project at an internal Codemasters studio, along with key talent from Black Rock and Sony. The game is in development at Codemasters' Guildford studio, which was founded in 2007 and is undergoing a period of heavy growth, the publisher said today. The 80-member studio has been in full production on its current "original action FPS" for roughly the past year. In addition to Black, who is serving as creative director for Codemasters Studios Guildford, the team includes former SCE London Studio executive producer Tom Gillo and former Black Rock Studio senior producer Andrew Wilson, both of whom serve in the same roles at Guildford. The project is being built with Codemasters' proprietary EGO Game Technology Platform, which has already been used to develop the internal titles Colin McRae: DiRT, Race Driver: GRID, and Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising. "Codemasters’ multi-site studio network has seen a significant rise in headcount to over 450 people and growth at the Guildford Studio is key to our overall development strategy," Codemasters development VP Gavin Cheshire in a statement. "With Stuart Black’s new shooter in production, deployment of EGO and key development figures heading up a highly skilled team, our Guildford facility offers great potential for development talent based in the South East," he added.