Warner Bros Games Montreal, developers of Gotham Knights, have shared a number of significant job openings on their website.
The listings are for senior roles, and Warner Bros Games Montreal has made it a precondition that the new hires have an average of five years’ experience. All the listings also require that applicants have been involved in shipping at least one AAA game.
It’s easy to read into this that Warner Bros Games Montreal is looking to fix issues that they had when working on Gotham Knights. While it may be presumptive to make an assertion either way, it is at least notable that there are no openings for more rank and file staff, at least so far.
They also seem to be looking for experienced leads for different divisions. There doesn’t seem to be any perceived issue with any particular division in the company, so much as they are looking for experienced management for all of them.
Warner Bros Games Montreal have listings for these job openings:
- Senior Concept Artist, Characters
- Lead Audio Programmer
- Tools Programmer, Pipeline
- Senior Gameplay Programmer
- Senior Rendering Programmer
- Lead Character Technical Animator
- Lead Technical Designer
- Senior System Analyst
- Gameplay Programmer
Gotham Knights has had a particularly turbulent launch history. While the initial firestorm was focused on the announcement it would only run on 30 FPS, which would expand to a broader divisive criticism in game reviews. On one end, Gotham Knights does have performance issues, which go beyond the 30 FPS limit, and are observable in every console platform but not on PC.
However, there are also problems with the game design itself. Some critics say that the multiplayer aspect that the game was supposedly built on does not seem to be necessary, and was not implemented in a way that makes players feel like they want to build a full team or that they make good use of each character’s unique abilities. There are also complaints that the RPG systems don’t really do much to level up the characters. Subsequently, there isn’t enough incentive to level up.
If you think of multiplayer cooperative action games like Diablo II Resurrected, Monster Hunter Rise Sunbreak, or Warhammer Vermintide II, you can see that other developers have clearly demonstrated that it is possible to build on these elements to make popular, enjoyable, and profitable games.
Maybe Warner Bros Games Montreal sees this potential too. Maybe the point of headhunting experienced staffers now is to help them get to the place where they can deliver on the potential of their projects moving forward as well.
Source: Warner Bros Games Montreal via Pledgetimes
