Chinese tech giant NetEase, second only to Tencent in the country’s games industry, is expanding with the opening of a new studio in the US. Jackalope Games will be based out of Austin, Texas and have “creative freedom and funding to create incredible new games” according to the press release.
The studio is led by Jack Emmert, a 22 year industry veteran. He spent 15 years and change at Cryptic Studios working on their various MMOs – Neverwinter, Star Trek Online, and many others. Over the course of that time he went from designer to CEO, taking part in every part of the business along the way and eventually being the person that helped move the company to full free-to-play and negotiating sale from Atari to Perfect World.
He then spent all of five months at Perfect World before moving to Daybreak to manage their Austin Studio, working on DC Universe Online and another project. He was also Head of Games during this time. Finally he moved to be CEO of Dimensional Ink Games, developers of DC Universe Online, until March of this year.
Learnings from that? Well, Netease are probably after a free-to-play MMO of some kind, certainly a service game. This would also make sense with their Chinese user base and general industry trends. Emmert talks in the release about his passion to “create engaging online universes for gamers worldwide.”
In terms of hires, no others are mentioned, but Emmert talks about his “team” and the release makes mention of Jackalope embracing the “virtual office” and hiring from across the world.
It’s unclear whether we’re looking at a full MMO here, like Emmert’s rumored Marvel project at Daybreak/Dimensional Ink, or some other service game, think Genshin Impact, Path of Exile, or even something like PUBG. No doubt we’ll find out in the coming years.
Written by Ben Barrett on behalf of GLHF.
