Wizards of the Coast has launched a new games studio, with the first project being an action-adventure game set in the GI Joe universe. Wizards of the Coast has posted several job listings related to a new games development studio based out of the Raleigh-Durham area of North Carolina. The game studio is led by “industry veterans” from WB Games, the studio behind the Hitman series and several of the Batman: Arkham games. Although the new game studio is a division of Wizards of the Coast, it will be developing projects based on other Hasbro properties, such as Transformers, Micronauts, GI Joe, and Oujia. The first of these projects is third-person action-adventure game set in the GI Joe universe. Based on the job listings posted on the Wizards of the Coast website, this project will utilize the Unreal Engine and will utilize both a melee combat system and a shooting system.
Hasbro first announced plans to make the game development studio earlier in 2021 and even posted a piece of early concept art for the GI Joe game. However, this is the first time we’ve seen public job postings about the game studio and received confirmation that the first project it was working on is this new GI Joe game.
As part of a larger company reorganization earlier this year, Hasbro placed Wizards of the Coast in charge of the corporation’s digital game plans. Hasbro plans to develop more video games based on its brands in-house and Wizards has opened several new games studios in recent months to start working on these projects. Two such studios is Tuque Games (which developed the Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Alliance video game) and Archetype Entertainment, which was formed by Bioware Studios veterans to develop new IP outside of Dungeons & Dragons and Magic: The Gathering.
Obviously, it will take a few years to see anything come out of these game studios. However, you can check out the current job postings on Wizards of the Coast’s website here. We’ll keep you posted on any new developments or announcements.
