The Initiative’s latest hire is Sylvia Chambers, a character animator who worked at Naughty Dog on Uncharted 4 and Uncharted: The Lost Legacy, and at DICE on Battlefield V. According to Chamber’s LinkedIn page (opens in new tab), she started working at The Initiative on a contract basis in April 2020.
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What this means for The Initiative
Chambers has not only worked in the gaming industry, but she was also a shot creator for Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok at The Third Floor, a pre-visualization studio. If that doesn’t excite you, check out Chambers’ demo reel above. Judging by Chambers’ work, we can guess The Initiative is working on an action-adventure game played either from a first-person or third-person perspective. We’re personally holding out hope for a third-person game, but at least The Initiative doesn’t appear to be working on something as underwhelming as a card game. Given the amount of talent on the team, this new game could bolster the Xbox Series X’s exclusive list to match the PS5’s. Including Chambers, there’s Christian Cantamessa (Red Dead Redemption writer), Brian Westergaard (God of War lead producer), Dan Neuburger (previously at Crystal Dynamics for 12 years), Blake Fischer (in publishing at Microsoft for 16 years) and Lindsey McQueeney (in recruiting at Google, Crystal Dynamics and 38 Studios). Top that off with Drew Murray (Sunset Overdrive director), the design director at The Initiative, and Darrell Gallagher (previously Crystal Dynamics, Activision and Square Enix), the head of studio at The Initiative. We still haven’t heard an official announcement about what The Initiative is working on, but we know the game is already playable. Head of Xbox Phil Spencer got to playtest the game (opens in new tab) back in February 2020. Spencer recently teased that we will be seeing Xbox Series X games sometime soon, so we imagine The Initiative’s game will be in that lineup.
