Infinity Ward Losing Yet More Staff
After the debacle between Activision management and Infinity Ward heads Vince Zampella and Jason West, it appears yet more Infinity Ward staff are jumping ship.
This time lead animator Mark Grigsby and lead character animator Paul Messerly have decided to leave, with VG247 placing the total number of staff deserting at 12 since last month.
Vince and Zampella have started their own games company called Respawn Entertainment, so it wouldn’t be unreasonable to guess that some of them may be jumping ship to go work there instead. Activision accused the pair of just that however, suggesting that they had planned to take all the best employees with them to their new company, which is funnily enough owned by EA.
To continue the speculation, analyst Michael Pachter said that they estimate another ‘œ10-20′ employees to leave Infinity Ward but noted that it probably won’t impact sales. His firm Wedbush Morgon are expecting Activision to ‘œput out a competitive product’ when the next Modern Warfare lands despite the staff losses.
Since I don’t think many people actually care who makes their games, I unfortunately doubt Activision’s sales are going to dip on this. All they will probably do is promote internally, maybe pull over a few from their B-team otherwise known as Treyarch, and there you go, an annualized franchise they will milk to death.
Just like Guitar Hero.
@ouched: Actually, with the amount of stink over MW2, IW and ATVI, it might hurt them in the long run.