A closer look at T-Minus Zero Entertainment, NetEase's latest foray into the West
NetEase has been on a business development spree for the past year or so, launching a wealth of new studios and acquiring a handful of them as well – mostly in the West.
Let's take a deep breath and go through them: first US studio Jackalope Games in May 2022 (rebranded to Jackalyptic since), opening of Jar of Sparks in Seattle in July 2022, acquisition of Quantic Dream in August 2022, new Japanese studio GPTrack50 in October 2022, acquisition of Canadian game developer SkyBox Labs in January, creation of remote studio Spliced in February, Barcelona-based Anchor Point Studios in April, launch of Canadian developer Bad Brain Game Studios in May, alongside another new Japanese studio, PinCool.
That's only focusing on a (generous) one-year period and not even counting studios it simply invested in during that time.
The latest in this long list is T-Minus Zero Entertainment, a new Austin-based developer launched this August. Most of NetEase's newly created studios have one thing in common: they're leveraging the expertise of AAA veterans. And T-Minus is no exception as it's headed by co-founder of BioWare Austin and Battlecry Studios (now Bethesda Game Studios Austin) Rich Vogel, of Ultima Online and Star Wars: The Old Republic fame.
"NetEase wants to offer a space for very talented, creative people to build what they want to build," Vogel tells us. "Because they see that as a gap in our industry, and a lot of publishers will just say: 'You'll do [another sequel] and enjoy every minute of it.' Well, some people get tired…
"A lot of that is confining. And that's why all the new games you'll see coming out, the really unique ones, are from indies. So that, to me, is what NetEase is trying to do. It also helps [them] to
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