'The Avengers Project' Developer Expands With New Studio

Crystal Dynamics is ready to move up in the world.

The developer, which has been around since 1992, is expanding its studio with a number of new hires, as well as the opening of a new studio. It's certainly come a long way in the past few years, mainly thanks to its work on the Tomb Raider franchise.

"Today at Crystal Dynamics, we're proud to announce our expansion with key new hires at our Redwood Shores headquarters and the creation of a new Bellevue, Washington satellite studio: Crystal Northwest," the company announced in a news release.

"Our new studio in the Seattle area is officially up and running as of today, and is a full-fledged extension of Crystal Dynamics. Dedicated initially to technology development, it delivers even more expertise to the highly-anticipated Avengers Project. Led by 20-year industry veterans Chad Queen and James Loe, the new studio bolsters the development of future games, tools, and technology.

"In addition to the new studio, Crystal Dynamics has added best-in-class development talent to our Redwood Shores, CA headquarters. Among the dozens of new hires are world-class developers like Vincent Napoli, the new Lead Combat Designer at Crystal Dynamics who was most recently on the latest God of War, plus Ben Wanat, an 18-year industry veteran and an original co-founder of the Dead Space franchise, who led the development of Dead Space 3 as Creative Director. Joining them is David Fifield, who sports 20 years of experience as Executive Producer and Design Director at 343 Industries on Halo, as well as Game Director at Raven Software on numerous Call of Duty titles. We continue to attract the best and the brightest talent across all disciplines, many recently hailing from the likes of Naughty Dog, Pixar, EA, and many more."

The company has been hard at work working alongside Eidos Montreal on development of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, which just went gold and will release on schedule. It's also been working on a yet unannounced Avengers game alongside Square Enix and Marvel.

"We're aggressively scaling up our teams and adding a new studio with spectacular talent to deliver the ultimate gaming experiences for our players," said Scot Amos, Co-Head of Studio at Crystal Dynamics. "We have assembled a team of industry veterans and leaders in order to create gaming experiences that surpass the expectations of our passionate community."

The house that Gex and Legacy of Kain built has certainly come a long way over the years, and they're only getting stronger from here. Congrats to Crystal Dynamics on their massive growth!

Want to see their latest work in action? Shadow of the Tomb Raider releases on Friday, Sept. 14 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.