Insomniac Games Swells To Over 520 Employees

[Zzero]

Everwild has been rebooted how many times?

As far as we know, never. Though its had a very painful development, apparently, and as of a year ago they still don't know what it is fully going to be. But, on the other hand, Sea of Thieves took forever to come out too and eventually became Microsoft's standout hit of the generation. Well that and Sunset Overdrive, which, well, thats why you are better off with first party studios rather than moneyhatting.

 

[Yobo]

Google. Some employment websites, some sourced from Wikipedia citations, I did have some standards and didn't take LinkedIn headcounts or other dubious sources. Sadly, Sony's rather generic studio names (and the weird status of stuff like XDev and PSS VA) make them harder to Google and thus I couldn't find reliable numbers for some like San Diego.

How is "Google" and "some employment websites" more accurate than LinkedIn? The biggest employment site on the internet. Media Molecule is way off for example, or you think half their workforce on LinkedIn have the wrong company assigned?

While that might be true. Sometimes people don't update it or forgot to. I am sure PS studios has expanded greatly. But I don't think bungie has 1500 employees.

Where are you getting your numbers from?

There will be some variance, but pretty rare for people not to update their LinkedIn when getting a new job and unless these places have gone through massive layoffs there is no reason to think their LinkedIn numbers aren't relatively accurate

 

[Box]

How can rare only put out sea of thieves for 5 years while having almost 300 employees? Wtf are they doing over there??

Mojang has almost a thousand and they take months just to add one new block to the game

 

[MaxParrish]

Nice. Hoping a Rivet spin off game is part of their in-development games.

I don't see the point : Rivet is functionally a complete clone of Ratchet. A Rivet spin- off would be the same as a Ratchet sequel...

 

[Box]

I don't see the point : Rivet is functionally a complete clone of Ratchet. A Rivet spin- off would be the same as a Ratchet sequel...

Ratchet and clank hasn't been good since the ps2 anyways, i miss the old humour and gameplay

 

[Zzero]

How is "Google" and "some employment websites" more accurate than LinkedIn? The biggest employment site on the internet. Media Molecule is way off for example, or you think half their workforce on LinkedIn have the wrong company assigned?

Those websites are actually trying to report employment numbers, thats not LinkedIn's function and it doesn't even attempt to do it. Your wildly inaccurate Bungie numbers are only the most glaring example of it being wrong.

And this is going to shock you but my MM number is accurate (well, its six years old, but it comes from their own website) while yours is... not sourced at all.

 

[Yurinka]

Google. Some employment websites, some sourced from Wikipedia citations, I did have some standards and didn't take LinkedIn headcounts or other dubious sources. Sadly, Sony's rather generic studio names (and the weird status of stuff like XDev and PSS VA) make them harder to Google and thus I couldn't find reliable numbers for some like San Diego.

Well, XDEV isn't a studio. It started as a division within Liverpool Studio that branched out and become its own studio to manage 'external development' (this is the origin of the XDEV name), outsourcing made in other studios for Liverpool and nearby Sony studios, plus also the management and publishing of 2nd party games. They also added later there PR/CM/CS support for some European 1st and 2nd party games, but also from other locations.

They did grow and basically became in charge of managing 2nd party publishing and outsourcing for Europe. Then in USA they also had people doing 2nd party publishing and outsourcing for American teams inside some internal development studios, mostly Sony Santa Monica. They also did branch out outside these American internal development studios to become an external team to them, which later became the American branch of XDEV.

And later same happened in Japan: the 2nd party publishing and outsourcing for the Japanese teams was handled by Japan Studio, but in the recent restructuring where it was rebranded to Team Asobi, their 2nd party publishing and outsourcing team was branched out to become a different team/studio, which now would be the Asian branch of XDEV to manage the 2nd party publishing and outsourcing for the Asian (now not only Japanese teams).

I mean, XDEV (or their 'External Development' team) isn't a development studio itself. Now it's a global team with people/ regional teams in several locations across the world.

Then there's another global team: Sony PlayStation Visual Arts Service Group (VASG), sometimes also mentioned as Visual Arts, Creative Arts or Product Development Services Group. They have offices in San Diego (the original one) or more recently also Malaysia (PlayStation Studios Malaysia) and are an internal support team to help the games developed by the other PS Studios teams like ND, SSM, Guerrilla, Japan Studios, Insomniac etc (and sometimes even games from outside Sony) in areas like motion capture, face/body scanning, art and animation, pretty often for cinematics.

Since they only do outsourcing/support job and never have been lead studio of any game -VASG started doing it for the TLOU remake, a project pitched by them, but later ND became the lead of this project because the higher ups weren't happy with the results-, they often aren't counted as PS Studios development teams.

 

[stebin alex]

• Naughty Dog is at 798
• Insomniac is 522
• Bungie is getting huge with 1,545 employees
• Guerrilla has 418 employees
• Santa Monica needs to scale up only 342
• Firesprite has 237 employees
• Sucker Punch with 185 could also grow a bit I feel
• Firewalk has 133 employees
• Haven also has 133 employees
• Bend Studio 118 employees
• London Studio 103 employees
• Media Molecule has 100 employees
• Bluepoint has 74 people
• Housemarque surprisingly growing fast with 104 employees
• Polyphony has 74
• Team Asobi has 11 with these two I'm not sure if LinkedIn is much used in Japan though
• Savage Game Studios is 30 employees
• Nixxes is 72 employees
• Valkyrie is 43 employees
• San Diego Studios hasnt got a LinkedIn page for some reason
• PixelOpus only has 1 employee? Maybe it's new page looks like the employees there link their profile to Playstation same as San Diego
• Deviation (not bought yet) is at 131 employees

For interest if we look at Xbox

• Mojang 965 employees
• Zenimax Online 527 employees
• Bethesda Game Studios 446 employees
• Bethesda Softworks 1,112 employees
• 343 has 422 employees
• Playground Games has 375 employees
• id Software has 293 employees
• Rare has 289 employees
• Arkane 265 employees
• Obsidian has 263 employees
• Turn 10 203 employees
• Coalition has 182 employees
• Machine Games 150 employees
• Ninja Theory 137 employees
• Undead Labs 135 employees
• inXile 119 employees
• Compulsion Games 82 employees
• Double fine 79 employees
• The Initiative has 49 employees
• Alpha Dog 22 employees
• Worlds Edge 11 employees
• TangoGameworks 13 employees - same as Sony Japanese company LinkedIn presence

With Activision

• Blizzard 5,808 employees
• King 3,163 employees
• Infinity Ward 658 employees
• Sledgehammer Games 563 employees
• Treyarch 592 employees
• Beenox 492 employees
• Raven Software 364 employees
• High Moon Studios 260 employees
• Toys for Bob 146 employees
• Digital Legends 103 employees

At a glance it looks like MS is really bloated in places. Like how Undead Labs has 135 employees yet you compare their products to Sony Bend and it's night and day.

Sony could also use some beefing up in places but Naughty Dog and Insomniac are some of the biggest on any of the lists. They are definitely 2+ game studios at their size now and SSM are close. Sucker Punch and Bend feel a bit under resourced for the scale of games they are on now. Surprisingly the newer purchases like Haven, Firesprite and Firewalk are quite hefty so my expectation for what they are working on is going up

Surprising to me how huge the mobile devs are

I wouldn't believe the number from ND at face value, I did a manual count, and it's around 450 -500, even my account is not accurate, as some LinkedIn users have private mode on, and you be fully sure.
most of the people there are either Dog trainers( as there is a dog walker place called Naughty Dog) or just some fans.

 

[peter42O]

I don't see the point : Rivet is functionally a complete clone of Ratchet. A Rivet spin- off would be the same as a Ratchet sequel...

I see it the same as Miles Morales. Basically Spider Man but still a spin off. Different story and characters but retains the same excellent combat and gameplay.

 

[Zzero]

Well, XDEV isn't a studio. It started as a division within Liverpool Studio that branched out and become its own studio...




Since they only do outsourcing/support job and never have been lead studio of any game -VASG started doing it for the TLOU remake, a project pitched by them, but later ND became the lead of this project because the higher ups weren't happy with the results-, they often aren't counted as PS Studios development teams.

Out sourcing/support studios are still contributing to and directing games, even if they aren't the lead teams and when looking at a company's output its still important to include them. Often times the only thing really separating them from a main team is location and the fact that they will move on to something else when the project is done.

And, as you say immediately after saying XDEV isn't a studio, XDEV is a studio. Its just not branded as one with a public presence and complete control of its output.

 

[Yurinka]

Out sourcing/support studios are still contributing to and directing games, even if they aren't the lead teams and when looking at a company's output its still important to include them. Often times the only thing really separating them from a main team is location and the fact that they will move on to something else when the project is done.

The lead studio of a game is the one who decide it's direction and takes the important decisions, the one in charge of the game. Nowadays big games need a ton of work, so they hire other studios to do part of that job following the indications, direction, best practices, guidelines, art style, etc. defined by the lead studio, who also develops the main core of the game and main characters, locations, etc.

These hired studios are the support/oursourcing studios. They do mostly additional art or animation. Or maybe the programming of some secondary enemies or weapons, or maybe a secondary game mode. Always following what the lead team told them to do, but sometimes they are given a small amount of freedom to develop that random enemy/NPC/environment prompt/weapon/etc.

And, as you say immediately after saying XDEV isn't a studio, XDEV is a studio. Its just not branded as one with a public presence and complete control of its output.

What I said is that XDEV isn't a game development studio. They don't develop games in-house.

They handle and overview the 2nd party publishing of externally developed (3rd party) studios and also manage outsourcing for the games leaded by the other 1st and 2nd party PS Studios: they find outsourcing studios to do the outsourcing job, brief them with the work to do that the lead teams of the other 1st/2nd party studios games asked for, handle the overview/review/approval process the submitted work, etc. They also even helped with PR/CM/CS/etc. for these other games leaded by other teams.

But they are part of PS Studios, so also SIE. The work they do requires a lot of work, so having them reduces a ton of related work from being made in the lead teams.