Today Disney announced that they are closing Utah based Avalanche studios.
"Avalanche studios?" You may be asking. "WTF does that have to do with Twisted Metal?!"
Well, while you may not realize it, it has a helluva lot to do with Twisted Metal. The standard Dave Jaffe/Sony peddled narrative is that everyone who was ever important making Twisted Metal ended up working at Eat Sleep Play.
However, that isn't even close to true. Incognito Entertainment was in the range of 100 team members at its peak. As far as I know, ESP never even hit the 50 team member mark, and a bunch of them were new hires. While SOME of the talent that made Twisted Metal: Black and Twisted Metal 2 went on to ESP, a TON of the very best people involved moved on.
A very small number of them ended up at Jobe's Lightbox studio, and some even ended up in other places, but a large portion of the very best ended up at Avalanche Studios, the Disney owned Utah studio. From there they went on to make the very awesome Disney Infinity play sets which I have been buying and playing with my kids for years now.
Well, today it was announced by Disney that they are closing that studio. The move puts at least 300 jobs out of existence.
Damn, damn, double damn.
I hate the way profit works in things. Avalanche WAS profitable so far as I can tell . . . But not as profitable as Disney wanted, and so it would rather cut areas to focus on others.
*Sigh*
The loss in money doesn't compare to the creative loss the universe will feel from this move, or the impacts on people's childhoods.
In many ways I'm more grateful to their work at Disney Inifintiy for what it did for my kids than I ever will be about their work on Twisted Metal, AND I care A LOT about how Twisted Metal has impacted me.
Here's to hoping some of the best and brightest in Twisted Metal's legacy land on their feet. They deserve it.
http://kotaku.com/disney-cancels-disney-infinity-1775846793