This week, we learned that Camelot Unchained studio City State Entertainment has seen a minor staffing shuffle, as four of the studio’s engineers moved on this past spring, something that without context could potentially worry fans given the controversy earlier this year and staffing difficulties in the past. We reached out to CSE’s Mark Jacobs for details, as he had already publicly addressed hiring in our comments this week, and now he’s given us another update that ought to allay any fears about the state of the studio since the comings and goings are effectively zero-sum.
“As usual in any industry, people come and go and CSE, like Mythic Entertainment and just about every other developer in the industry, rarely talks about it for legal reasons unless it’s a layoff,” Jacobs told us. “Just as in the past, when we have lost folks, we also have brought in new folks. Four new people joined us in the past couple of weeks and hopefully, we’ll have another person joining us in the coming weeks, so it’s safe to say that in our case, it isn’t a layoff.”
In fact, Linkedin entries make it clear that two of the departing devs simply left the gaming industry altogether. We’ve also previously covered the addition of several new developers to the Camelot Unchained team, some of whom have already been introduced on the forums to backers, including Chris Junior, a key MMORPG game designer with both RIFT and EverQuest II on his resume. Here’s what Jacobs told us this weekend about what Junior’s presence on the team means for the game:
“We are excited to have Chris Junior join our team. As a Senior Game Designer for us, he’ll be working with us to deliver a great RvR MMORPG. As someone who has focused on PvP throughout his career, as well as his work as a Game Director for Trion, he brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our team. Camelot Unchained Backers will see the first results from his hiring in the upcoming weeks as the Giants race trio make their appearance in our game. He has been focusing on adding his own stamp on their Banes and Boons and I’m looking forward to seeing that and more from him as we move through the summer.”
Meanwhile, the studio’s most recent newsletter showcases terrain and environment art, map concepting, armor and weaponry, wyverns, design documenting, and CUBE creativity, plus there’s the usual state of the build roundup. Earlier this week, we also covered CSE’s latest 90-day plan and weekend testing goals. We’ve included the screenshots from the newsletter, some of which are in-progress sketches, while others are from CUBE testers, so you can see how the visuals are coming along.
