Seems like an odd move to leave the leader in music-rhythm games for an independent developer, but Rock Band 3 senior designer Dan Teasdale did just that when he left for ‘Splosion Man‘s studio, Twisted Pixel. Posting in his official blog, Teasdale noted a desire for a more “hands on” approach to designing as being his chief reason for leaving Harmonix.
“I want to be able to help drive the vision and direction of a game,” he said, “but at the same time be hands on and physically implement and iterate on the low level of making games in a more substantial way than time affords me when working as a lead on multi-hundred person titles.”
I think this is cool. I love both of these developers, and I know that both studios are very ‘relaxed’. I bet Teasdale may be a little burnt out on making music games (he’s been doing so since the first Rockband), and he wants to make crazy games again.
Twisted Pixel is a great game studio. We had an interview with them at Pax East, and I was blown away by how down to earth they are.
I can certainly understand the desire to work in a smaller company, especially how cool the CEO was.
We even pressed him on how large twisted pixel would want to be and he said around 50 – 100 employees.
Oh! Found the link to the interview:
http://www.8bitx.com/Promos/New%20folder/PaxEast2010_TwistedPixel-CEO-Interview.mp3