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Hasbro’s game division, Wizards of the Coast, has just set up a new studio. As spotted by Hisstank, their new Raleigh-Durham studio is currently recruiting for a number of positions, all of which will be developing a AAA game “set in the GI JOE Universe.”
Details on the GI Joe game are a bit thin on the ground. All of the listings describe the title as a “multi-platform, action-adventure video game” and say that they’ll be reinventing “a beloved Hasbro IP.” Some of them describe it as a third-person game too, and ask for experience using Unreal Engine. Finally, the listing for the Lead Game Designer describes how the ideal candidate would be creating “3rd Person melee combat and traversal systems.” The last GI Joe game to be released was G.I. Joe: Operation Blackout, which was a team-based, third-person shooter released in October last year, and the few clues we already have suggest this will be quite different.
Wizards of the Coast’s Raleigh-Durham studio is a brand new developer “led by industry veterans from WB Games and other AAA studios.” The GI Joe game will be the team’s first project. The studio is part of Hasbro’s intentions to produce digital games for some of their “perennial favorites” including Transformers, G.I. Joe, Micronauts, and Ouija. Wizards of the Coast president Chris Cocks has previously described how they want to “bring these brands to digital life and develop experiences that resonate with the lifestyle gamer in ways that are new, fresh and provocative.”
The last Transformers console video game, Transformers: Battlegrounds, was released by Coatsink and Outright Games in October 2020, although we’ve seen far less of the franchise since Activision’s publishing contract for Transformers titles expired. The only Micronauts game to ever be released was on the ZX Spectrum in 1988, and I’m not sure I even want to think about what an Ouija game could look like. For the record, Hasbro does indeed sell an Ouija game for 2-4 players aimed at ages 8 years and up—they even sold one with a Stranger Things theme, although that one was restricted to ages 14 and up.
[Source: Wizards of the Coast via Hisstank]