Marvel's Avengers Is Crystal Dynamics Biggest Game Yet

Crystal Dynamics has been around for 25 years, and has shipped some pretty big games, including [...]

By Tyler Fischer

Crystal Dynamics has been around for 25 years, and has shipped some pretty big games, including the Tomb Raider reboot and its sequel. Yet, Marvel's Avengers -- its upcoming single-player, story-focused action games meets co-op live-service title -- is its biggest game yet. In fact, it's so big that Crystal Dynamics has had to scale up considerably, and right now, there's five studios working on the game to make sure it's up to snuff when it ships next year on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Google Stadia.

"From our side, it's the biggest thing that we've ever done," said Crystal Dynamics studio head Scott Amos while speaking to GamesIndustry. "We now have five studios working together to pull this off. Crystal Dynamics at Redwood Shores, we opened a new studio in Bellevue called Crystal North West. We have our partners in the Netherlands, Nixxes, which has a big team of people who we've worked with for 20 years. Eidos Montreal was our sister studio for all of Tomb Raider, so they're working on this. And even Square Enix Japan has folks from the tech group working with us."

Amos continued:

"We've literally had to put these five studios together and say: 'We're going this far. Tomb Raider, awesome. Rise of the Tomb Raider, even better. Shadow of the Tomb Raider... and it's like no, we're going beyond the boundaries'."

Amos adds that the team has had to make some radical changes to make the game work, and also hire "experts," such as Shaun Escayg, the game's creative director, who previously worked at Naughty Dog. Meanwhile, for multiplayer it recruited Dave Fifield, who helped ship Halo and Call of Duty games. For combat, they got Vince Napoli, who's coming off God of War.

"We cherry-picked the best of the best and said: 'Let's put this together in a new way for something bigger than we've ever done'."

Marvel's Avengers will be available on PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Google Stadia when it releases next year on May 15. For more news, media, and information on the game, be sure to peep all of our previous and extensive coverage of the title by clicking right here.

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