PlayStation London Studio, the first-party developer behind titles like SingStar and Blood and Truth, has announced that it’s building a team to work on a new online game for PlayStation 5.
In a tweet posted by its official account, the studio said that it’s “building a team from the ground up for an upcoming PlayStation 5 online game”, adding that “new starters will join at the perfect time to get involved in shaping our plans for a project we are exceptionally excited about.”
We're building a team from the ground up for an upcoming PlayStation 5 online game 🙌🏽New starters will join at the perfect time to get involved in shaping our plans for a project we are exceptionally excited about! Take a look at all our open roles 👇🏽 https://t.co/qD0R8bf8Bx pic.twitter.com/GbBZdB5JacJanuary 26, 2022
The roles that PlayStation London Studio is currently hiring for are wide-ranging, spanning production, art, design, QA and tech departments. There are quite a few ‘senior’ and ‘lead’ roles in the mix, too, including a Lead Level Designer and a Senior Gameplay AI Programmer, which suggests that the project is still in the fairly early stages.
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Another clear sign that the project is still in the early stages is that there’s no mention of a title or release date. Still, it looks like it’ll be worth keeping a close eye on PlayStation London Studio to see what the future might hold for online games on the PlayStation platform.
Analysis: What could it be?
The real question, of course, is: what exactly is it that PlayStation London Studio is working on? Well, reading its tweet and scouring through a few of the job listings on its site doesn’t actually yield a whole lot of solid information but there are some interesting tidbits.
The advertisement for a Lead Level Designer, for instance, identifies “experience designing maps for Coop gameplay (local or online)” as a plus. The Lead Technical Artist, meanwhile, will be working with a “ground breaking proprietary engine” in a role that “offers a unique opportunity to use your creative and technical skill to truly define a next-gen experience and allow us to push the boundaries of possibility.” Whoever takes up the position of Live Ops System Designer will be responsible for “designing a meta game that encourages long term, sustained engagement with our audience and forming a monetisation and economy design which offers players real value for what they choose to spend with us.”
It’s not a whole lot to go on, really. Looking at PlayStation London's history, though, it's a studio that's previously erred on the side of innovation, with ties to some of PlayStation's emergent peripheral technologies. It's the studio that worked on titles like SingStar and EyeToy. Most recently its focus was on titles for PlayStationVR such as the PSVR launch title, VR Worlds, as well as Blood and Truth.
Given these listings don’t mention VR at all, it feels unlikely that whatever the studio is working on is for the upcoming PSVR 2 but we won’t know for sure until some more solid details are confirmed.
