Xbox Series X exclusive faces exodus of senior designers

techradar.com:

Upcoming Xbox Series X exclusive Perfect Dark has seen an exodus of developers leave its core development team across the past year including multiple senior designers, raising questions about the current and future state of the game.

As spotted by VGC, around 34 people working on the Perfect Dark reboot at development studio The Initiative have left within the past year, according to its analysis of LinkedIn profiles. 

That equates to around half of the development team known to have been working on the game, and includes senior figures like its game director, lead level designer, design director, principal world builder, and a host of other senior technical, animation, QA, and art roles.

Speaking to former employees who had left the team over the last several months, VGC says many of its senior developers were frustrated with the top-down directing style of The Initiative’s studio head Darrell Gallagher and game director Daniel Neuburger. 

Neuburger joined the game’s development when Crystal Dynamics — the studio behind the most recent Tomb Raider trilogy and Marvel’s Avengers — was brought in to co-develop Perfect Dark last year, and has also left the project.

Senior team members were allegedly irritated by the lack of autonomy they were given to design the game, describing it as making painfully slow progress because of a splintered company culture.

“Making games is hard enough, let alone when you feel like you can’t get through to people making the decisions that affect everyone,” one former employee told VGC.

Other sources suggested the addition of Crystal Dynamics to the project likely means this reboot of Perfect Dark has itself been rebooted, and is years away from release.

Gallagher told VGC, however, the staffing