Assassin's Creed Hexe's ex-creative director and veteran developer Clint Hocking has just revealed he's heading a brand new indie game studio a mere two months after his departure from Ubisoft.
Hocking announced the formation of his independent studio, called Build Machine Games, this week in a brief LinkedIn post (thanks, PC Gamer). "We're lean and fast, but bold and ambitious," he says. "We aspire to expand the expressive range and power of the medium with emotionally resonant, socially relevant games that challenge players' perspectives, pre-conceptions and empathy as much as their reasoning and reflexes."
Build Machine Games' website currently only has two open job positions up: one for a programmer and another for an artist. The studio's calling for "experienced developers looking for a flat structure in a very hands-on environment," though there's no further details on what the company might make.
While the Build Machine Games site is full of pie in the sky speak, Hocking himself has had a pretty illustrious career in games to back it all up, starting with Ubisoft's Splinter Cell series where he quickly became creative director on the beloved Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and the equally-acclaimed Far Cry 2.
He then worked on some unnamed and/or unannounced projects at LucasArts, Valve, and Amazon Game Studios before re-joining Ubisoft in 2015 to helm open-world experiment, Watch Dogs Legion, and the still-mysterious Assassin's Creed Hexe.
All that to say, Hocking's CV is full of weird (good) AAA games that try something new and don't simply fold to the rote formulas already laid out for them. Even Watch Dogs Legion, for all its missteps, slotted immersive sim-esque mechanics into a series that could have otherwise been described as 'GTA but with hacking.' So I'll have an eye on whatever he makes next.
The upcoming Assassin's Creed game is still firmly shrouded in shadows, literally and figuratively, based on its spooky announcement trailer. Assassin's Creed Hexe's game director Benoit Richer also left the project a few weeks after Hocking's exit - the series' head of content Jean Guesdon has been sitting in the creative director's seat since February.
Behind-the-scenes shake ups aside, Guesdon said to "expect a unique, darker, narrative-driven Assassin's Creed experience" with Hexe, "set during a pivotal moment in history." Very hush hush over here.
