Former Blizzard President Jen Oneal is now doing her own thing with Studio Magic Soup.
It happens again and again that developers break away from their studio, mostly to pursue their own creative ideas: Former Bethesda and Obsidian employees develop the role-playing game Wyrdsong. Shooter experts formerly at DICE are working on the destructive shooter The Finals, and we even have a separate list for the games from ex-Witcher developers.
However, the case of the new developer studio Magic Soup is a special one: Jen Oneal, J. Allen Brack and John Donham are exceptionally experienced and highly decorated Blizzard veterans.
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Who are the founders?
Only Oneal serves as CEO of Magic Soup. Before leaving Blizzard, she served as President of the company with Mike Ybarra for a few months. Previously, she worked at Lucas Arts on franchises such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones and was studio head of Vicarious Visions, where she worked on Destiny 2 and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater.
J. Allen Brack was president of Blizzard before Jen Oneal and relinquished his office to her in the wake of the Blizzard scandal. His career began at Origin Systems where he worked on Wing Commander. With John Donham he was involved as a producer on the MMO Star Wars Galaxies before moving to Blizzard and working there for over 12 years World of Warcraft worked.
John Donham joined Blizzard in 2019 and was part of the management team there until 2020. Previously, he was employed at Sony, among other things, where he worked on the EverQuest and Planetside franchises, for example. After his time at Blizzard, he moved to Amazon, where he served as the director of Prime Gaming.
What kind of game is Magic Soup developing?
Since the studio was only recently founded, the first major project is also in a very early development phase. That’s why there aren’t too many details, but Jen Oneal reveals it Interview mit Venturebeat
It’s too early to discuss the details. But the idea is that we’ll use our experience developing triple-A games to create something that brings out the best in people and expresses the positive power of the medium. We’re working on something that doesn’t fit into any existing genre today.
We’ll probably have to wait a few more years before we see anything concrete about Magic Soup’s first game. So far, the founders have only hired a few employees. And after the Motto des Studios to close, the project will probably be quite large and extensive: We make huge games that make you feel good.
