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Sony's Firesprite is moving to a new office that's more than 20 times larger than its current one



Firesprite’s office unit at Vanilla Factory covers 2,295 sq ft, according to the building’s floor plan information.

However, the company has now leased a four-building cluster in Liverpool’s Duke Street, which will give it 50,000 sq ft of space.
The new letting, which is only a three-minute walk from the current Firesprite offices, consists of four buildings, including a grade-two building that used to be Liverpool’s public library.

Invest Liverpool says the lease, which lasts until 2032, is the largest letting in Liverpool in three years.
The move to significantly larger accommodation will help Firesprite handle the numerous projects it’s currently working on.
The studio is working alongside Guerrilla Games on PlayStation VR 2 title Horizon: Call of the Mountain, and VGC understands it has also taken over development of the as-yet unannounced Twisted Metal reboot.

Recent job listings on the studio’s website also show that it’s working on a “AAA narrative driven horror-adventure game in Unreal 5“.

Well say what you will, PlayStation is clearly investing in Firesprite. For such a new studio they are actually working on quite a lot of projects at once as well.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Why Liverpool?

Angry Wrestling GIF
 

reksveks

Member
I hate the fact that dumb twitter people have gotten me to look at this kinda of data but LinkedIn numbers grew from 226 to 239 since Jan 22, its been a bit static on this metric (i am not sure its a good one but ehh).
 







Well say what you will, PlayStation is clearly investing in Firesprite. For such a new studio they are actually working on quite a lot of projects at once as well.


Interesting. They want to transform the studio into a development hub in England: Multiple teams, Mocap facilities, support for external partners...That's my belief, anyway. Talent is the number one resource in this industry, and they seem intent on recruiting a ton of people.
 
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VN1X

Banned
They’re content delivery should place them somewhere around Rare’s level, yet they’re three times bigger.
I'm honestly not sure if I'm missing something or if your take is really this reductive. Maintaining and supporting a hugely popular game could be just as intensive as churning out games every few years. The size of a videogame development studio does not equal the amount of games they put out, obviously (nor should it).

I'm not a Minecraft player (anymore) and even I can see that the amount of content they keep releasing is quite substantial. Plus, I imagine the amount of work required to keep the game from imploding in on itself these days isn't a trivial affair either lol.
 
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I hate the fact that dumb twitter people have gotten me to look at this kinda of data but LinkedIn numbers grew from 226 to 239 since Jan 22, its been a bit static on this metric (i am not sure its a good one but ehh).

aQwIf39.png

Table for the mildly curious
Linkedin is hardly a good way to know how many people a certain studio has tbh. Not everyone uses it, others don't always keep them up to date, etc.
 

reksveks

Member
Linkedin is hardly a good way to know how many people a certain studio has tbh. Not everyone uses it, others don't always keep them up to date, etc.
I hate the fact that dumb twitter people have gotten me to look at this kinda of data but LinkedIn numbers grew from 226 to 239 since Jan 22, its been a bit static on this metric (i am not sure its a good one but ehh).
Yeah. I had a ex-colleague that didn't update for 9 month that they had left the old company.

I don't personally think it's accurate but keep track of it for trends.
 
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bitbydeath

Member
I'm honestly not sure if I'm missing something or if your take is really this reductive. Maintaining and supporting a hugely popular game could be just as intensive as churning out games every few years. The size of a videogame development studio does not equal the amount of games they put out, obviously (nor should it).

I'm not a Minecraft player (anymore) and even I can see that the amount of content they keep releasing is quite substantial. Plus, I imagine the amount of work required to keep the game from imploding in on itself these days isn't a trivial affair either lol.
They’re not like Epic with Weekly updates, they do an update maybe once or twice a year.
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
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Star-Lord

Member
What's with the hate for Liverpool? I went to uni there, and honestly, it's a fantastic city. The football team have dived lately, sure, but you can't knock the culture and lifestyle there.
 

VN1X

Banned
They’re not like Epic with Weekly updates, they do an update maybe once or twice a year.
That goes into a broader discussion (last time I checked Epic employees are notoriously overworked) plus these are wildly different games with different types of architecture, design goals and player needs & expectations.

For all we know half the studio is constantly working on coding issues or perhaps most of the studio comprises of marketing people. Even if the ratio between both studios is 1-to-1 in terms of department make up that still wouldn't mean that we should expect the exact same output from them. I honestly don't know what you are trying to argue here.

I mean Vampire Survivors has multiple updates every month and I'm pretty sure that's just one dude. If we follow your logic then the dev 'studio' behind that game does more work than all of Mojang combined. That's not how anything works lol.
 
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sircaw

Banned
What's with the hate for Liverpool? I went to uni there, and honestly, it's a fantastic city. The football team have dived lately, sure, but you can't knock the culture and lifestyle there.
it's all about the football, nothing against the people or place, but as a man utd supporter my version of a friendly handshake is this

kyliethicc kyliethicc is ground zero "lollipop_disappointed:

nuclear explosion GIF
 
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Mojang is also working on another project, Minecraft Legends and I’m pretty sure they’re supporting Minecraft Dungeons along side Minecraft. It’s not that surprising when you think about it.
Yep, and allegedly they're working on another Minecraft game beside Legends.
 

STARSBarry

Gold Member
That goes into a broader discussion (last time I checked Epic employees are notoriously overworked) plus these are wildly different games with different types of architecture, design goals and player needs & expectations.

For all we know half the studio is constantly working on coding issues or perhaps most of the studio comprises of marketing people. Even if the ratio between both studios is 1-to-1 in terms of department make up that still wouldn't mean that we should expect the exact same output from them. I honestly don't know what you are trying to argue here.

I mean Vampire Survivors has multiple updates every month and I'm pretty sure that's just one dude. If we follow your logic then the dev 'studio' behind that game does more work than all of Mojang combined. That's not how anything works lol.

Actually knew a few people who work for EPIC from my old industry days, they work to support the Unreal engine and tooling rather than any games so it might be a bit diffrent for them, last I heard it's a pretty chill job but it's been a few years now since I last talked, all the current job listing seem to be mobile platform based so might have changed.
 
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Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
Interesting. They want to transform the team into a development hub in England: Multiple teams, Mocap studio...That's my belief, anyway. Talent is the number one resource in this industry, and they seem intent on recruiting a ton of people.
London is too expensive and the EU helped boom (U.K. enjoyed being a universal hub of talent) is no more this pushing people to hire in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Dundee, Birmingham… the North. Better brush your Brummie up.



anyways…

Organic growth ;).

Looney Tunes Cartoon GIF
 
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That's excellent to see.
Arnt they currently contracted for Star Citizen?
If so Sony might not want to wait until that's over before they tool up for their next PS game (Twisted Metal), hence the big increase in offices and employees.
They will have three titles on the go at once, which is a big task for any studio.

It's quite interesting seeing both MS and Sony go from basically reducing their first party studios to now going crazy the other way.
 
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