Fang and Claw Q&A – AAA Veterans Band to Work on the Next Evolution of Fantasy Combat Sports Games

wccftech.com:

A few weeks ago, former ArenaNet and then Undead Labs co-founder Jeff Strain and Annie Delisi Strain announced Fang and Claw, a new triple-A addition to Prytana Media's portfolio of game development studios.

Fang and Claw is headed by Jeremy Gaffney, an industry veteran who founded Turbine Entertainment (his contributions are in the original Asheron's Call) and later worked on games like City of Heroes and Wildstar, among others. Gaffney is joined by an experienced group of fellow AAA veterans who are creating a new fantasy combat sports game, having received $3M in seed investment from Transcend Fund.

I recently had the chance to speak with Gaffney on Fang and Claw and a lot of hot game industry topics, including the ethics of using generative AI and how good games can have problems breaking through in certain genres.

Jeff, it's nice to speak to you again. The last time we met was at a Wildstar pre-release media presentation. What have you been up to since?

I actually did a stretch where I just had a small team of friends and worked on an indie game together, which was a ton of fun. Getting hands-on in games is something that, as you go to bigger teams, you get less and less. But when you're 400 people, as you get to launch a large-scale AAA game, you're not coding; you are helping people to help other people to help people who are making the game often. And that can be fulfilling, you need to direct things.

But I feel like my IQ drops by about ten every year I don't code or do hands-on design. If you go enough years without doing it, eventually, you're not left with that many job options. You either end up in some sort of executive function or maybe in politics or something. So, I had to start doing that again.

How did