Armature Opened by Metroid Prime Alumni

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Austin, Texas, is home to one more game studio this week, as three of the biggest names from Metroid Prime developer Retro Studios have announced the opening of their studio, Armature.

Mark Pacini, Todd Keller and Jack Mathews, respectively the former Game Director, Art Director and Principal Technology Engineer of the Metroid Prime series, had left Retro Studios in April. Today the team also announced an exclusive publishing deal with Electronic Arts--but the deal is a bit unconventional.

Speaking to Kotaku, Pacini revealed that Armature will join EA's Blueprint Division. Rather than make ordinary studio games, Armature will spend its time developing prototypes. Once a prototype is chosen for full-fledged development, that work will be moved to another studio while Armature's small staff remains on board as directors.

"EA approached us with this really interesting business model of creating a small studio that is only comprised of industry veterans," Pacini said. "The goal is to create new IP [intellectual property] with a very, very small team and to produce a game without having to grow that team."

"We are interested to see how it goes past the prototype stage," he continued. "Our studio is the grand experiment. It's kind of a really different take on how to make these larger scale games."

Armature is now hiring.

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From The Chatty
  • reply
    September 15, 2008 4:03 PM

    [deleted]

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      September 15, 2008 4:16 PM

      3 founding members + 8 open jobs = 11 people

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        September 15, 2008 5:07 PM

        [deleted]

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          September 15, 2008 5:26 PM

          Whenever I read or hear someone say "Good luck!", it's always in the voice from Star Fox 64.

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            September 15, 2008 5:33 PM

            Haha, I have the same thing with 'Good bye' from the original SNES version at the level select screen.

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            September 15, 2008 8:05 PM

            lol, now everytime I hear it, that will be in my head. Another one though that always pops up for me is Congratulations from Mario Kart 64. Every time hear or read the word, I always hear Mario saying it in my head.

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        September 15, 2008 8:18 PM

        my guess is they get a core product dev'd out some, and then the money people go "hay, we like you" and then they hire in a ton of artists and stuff. just a guess.

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          September 16, 2008 4:42 AM

          No, close - they do the prototype, then act as producers for another studio finishing it off. Kind of like 3DR and Prey, except Armature do more initial dev work (i.e. prototyping).

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      September 16, 2008 12:02 AM

      + outsource of assets on top of that ;)

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