Business Research: Respawn Entertainment

Respawn Entertainment is an independent video game development studio formed by Jason West and Vince Zampella, former co-founders of Infinity Ward and creators of the multi-billion dollar Call of Duty franchise. The studio is currently working on its first title TItanfall.

They are a Californian based studio, who team consists primarily of ex-Infinity Ward members, the guys who brought you some of the biggest titles in the Call of Duty franchise. There are some quite murky surrounding behind the dissolution of Infinity Ward, but the two top guys have now made Respawn Entertainment, and just recently released their first title Titanfall.

The game is fairly fresh shall we say but oh my word is it epic!! There is the definitive flare of Call of Duty like gameplay but with a greater focus upon the graphics and environments, oh yeah by the way in case you didn’t know there are huge ass metal robots that are playable during the game.

Titanfall take every boy boys dream of robots and warfare and blends it together to make this highly competitive, next gen shooter. The gameplay is intuitive and has a fairness between genders of players, i.e. male character and female characters are balanced. They take the art of warfare and made it into an art form. The game has campaign that really gets confusing as you play it via a co-operative online assault against other live players, however the game modes and abilities within the game are what really separate this game from any other shooter.

They take the best of what they did well for call of Duty and made it fairer and more balanced, with the slight enhancement of the Titans, huge robots that drop in to battle once you earned them. This is what really sells the game. You go from a generic shooter to a Mecha warfare game in an instance. The way in which you play as a pilot reflects generic shooters but with all the enhancements of the futuristic settings, you have the ability to fee run and evade oncoming attacks, quite different from most shooters to date.

The environment are quite limited yet offer a wide area to explore during the battle they have to be able to accommodate a full squad of 6 titans per team, but the thing that I love about the game and what most people playing will miss, is the attention to detail.

As an artist I spent a good while not shooting but exploring I made sure that looked at what exactly the next gen capabilities were. When you’re running round firing and hunting other player you fail to notice the subtle detail such as labels on the wall fire alarms and the ammo crates etc. Each prop is a work of art in itself and due to the nature of the sci-fi futuristic setting every console and metal panel is exquisite.

Granted the game is just another large shooter but the additions on the Titans and the gameplay mechanics itself ensure that it not another wait round camping game. There is an element of skill, and the way in which you level up or in this case regenerate requires certain goals are achieved, rather than just shooting a tonne of people. The challenge to explores the weapons on offer and ensure that you have to try and experiment with weapons to progress to a higher level.

As the game itself is so fresh there is going to be a series of extra content that will come in future months. I can’t honestly see this being the only game to ever be made by this company plus the variety of directions in the way they can take this game is endless.

I love to be able to work on the next series of Mechs or even the vehicle that you can’t use but are dotted around the maps. The game is beautiful for as beautiful as a warfare game can be I’d love to be able to work on something that could help contribute towards it in some way or even design the next playable Titan.

Let the Titans Hit the Floor, Let the Titans hit the  FLOOOOOR !!!!!!