Jade Raymond says more about the birth of Haven Studios

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Seven months after the announcement of Haven Studios and its partnership with Sony Interactive Entertainment, Jade Raymond landed thirty minutes to chat with Chris Dring from Games Industry. An interview that returns to the birth of this studio piloted by the old Ubisoft, Electronic Arts and Stadia, but who is careful to do too many confidences on his first game.

During this exchange, Jade Raymond revealed that the idea of ​​launching his own studio was already making his way before Stadia publicly announces the end of the project Stadia Games and Entertainment, the family of internal studios including Jade Raymond was responsible. The former producer of Assassin s Creed welcomes the freedom to begin his personal steps when the wind started to turn, especially to go to find the partner of his future studio. This is what explains why it took place so shortly (one month) between the announcement of the end of Stadia Games and Entertainment and the birth of Haven Studios with Sony Interactive Entertainment already at his side.

We started thinking about it when we were still at Google to work on stadia. It became clear that we would not be able to continue. Fortunately, Google sustained me a lot in my search for an exit door, And I agreed to prepare a high level presentation, which I presented to a few donors. And I feel very lucky that the people we chose to work first, namely Sony Playstation , kindly wanted to get started and support us. , Explains Jade Raymond.

I have discussed a lot with different developers of their work experience with different publishers, and Sony stands out like a company that really understands the creative process and the development of games, which supports the development teams and gives them the autonomy of which They need.

Jade Raymond about the choice of the publisher

Based in Montreal, Haven Studios today employs 54 employees, many of whom have already worked with Jade Raymond at Stadia and sometimes well before that, the confuses of the studio including several members of the original team of Assassin s Creed . A core that is already familiar with and who has endeavored to repatriates big catches, like Raphael Lacoste, artistic director on the games Assassin s Creed since the very first, who has taken his new duties in July.

If Haven Studios team has been composed of people who have worked together for years, Jade Raymond believes that it is important to establish new values. And that we say that the competition is raging in Montreal: at Haven Studios, we are nice. In one of the values, and I probably not seen in many other game studios, is the kindness. We really believe that kindness will unlock freedom of creation and innovation. It s some thing that really comes from the team. I was not there when they made the brainstorming and that they did all this mental card story. The kindness appeared as the most important word , says Jade Raymond .

A diversity to work, a teleworking to limit

We could object that just working with the same people as 15 years ago is probably not the best way to question themselves. Jade Raymond recognizes that his team is for the moment not as heterogeneous as it should. But the direction of the studio promises to work there.

We are all convinced that the way to reach an original concept that finds an echo with a large number of people is to have a diverse team. And not to make the same old games and the same old decisions. We So have taken the strategic decision to engage a recruiter specializing in diversity and inclusion. His name is Madina, and she has designed for us a framework and a recruitment process that allowed us to be inclusive from the outset. Can we read.

A recurring feature among studios founded since the spring of 2020 lies in their ability to adapt to teleworking. On this point, Jade Raymond adopts a posture quite far from fashion speech now, but who can clearly defend yourself: for her, Haven Studios members have before any vocation to work together in the office, as in the world before . There will be some exceptions, for example Corey May, the main screenwriter of the first Assassin s Creed , who lives in California and sports the title of World / IP Director at Haven Studios.

Our dream remains to return to a studio. My best days are those where I can walk around and seeing people work, sitting at a desk and playing the thing that is being prototyped, and have a casual conversation in front of a coffee. We talked about it with the team. We asked them if they wanted to be at a distance and what they thought about it. And all said they wanted to be in the office a number of days.

Jade Raymond about teleworking

In addition to Raphael Lacoste and Corey May, Creative Director Mathieu Leduc and the Director of Production Pierre-Francois Sapinski are some other members of the Raymond clan already present during the production of the first Assassin s Creed . By dint of evoking the game of Ubisoft, we would like to imagine that the first game of Haven Studios will register in a similar registry. Yet the rare clues sown by Jade Raymond on this new enigmatic license do not take the moment for the moment. To believe Jade Raymond, which fascinates Haven Studios today are the notions of jeu as a social platform and Contenu generated and remixed by the user .