Netflix is hiring a game director to work on “a brand-new AAA PC game” at a new LA studio led by former Overwatch boss Chacko Sonny.
The tech giant is seeking talent that has “experience with FPS and/or third person shooter games” and “extensive experience working on live service games”.
There are also nods to experience working with “social systems” and both “cooperative and competitive” gameplay, plus working knowledge of Unreal Engine.
Like its mobile titles, it appears that Netflix’s triple-A PC game will be free of IAPs through subscription. The job ad states that the successful candidate “will be able to create, ship and run a game without any competing design constraints due to monetization.”
As ever, Netflix is looking for top-tier talent – the ideal candidate is described as having “At least 10 years of game design experience, including experience as a Creative Director, Game Director, or comparable design leadership role.”
Netflix Games Studio’s LA office is also hiring a technical director, art director and live service analyst, plus there’s a reference to a “an exciting new 3rd person action RPG” in the job description for a lead engineer.
The successful candidate will likely be working with Chacko Sonny, former executive producer for the Overwatch franchise at Blizzard. Netflix boss Mike Verdu revealed last month that Sonny had been hired to lead its new LA studio.
“He could have done anything, but he chose to come here,” Verdu said of new hire Sonny. “We are building a team around him and looking to him to help reinvent what games can be. You don’t get people like that coming to your organisation to build the next big thing in gaming unless there’s a sense that we’re really in it for the long haul and in it for the right reasons.”
Prior to Blizzard and Overwatch, Sonny held other senior roles including director of product development at Sony Santa Monica and studio lead at Activision-owned Beachhead. He was also founder, creative director and CFO at Savage Entertainment for 12 years.
The triple-A PC title fits into the wider vision Verdu talked through last month at TechCrunch Disrupt. “We’re seriously exploring a cloud gaming offering so that we can reach members on TVs and on PCs,” he said.
“It’s a value add. We’re not asking you to subscribe as a console replacement. It’s a completely different business model. The hope is over time that it just becomes this very natural way to play games wherever you are.”
Netflix’s march into the games space has been relentless in the last few months. It just released game of the year contender Immortality, is releasing six titles in November plus four more in December.
It has been busily building its game development capabilities as well, having recently acquired Triple Town maker Spry Fox and set up a new studio in Helsinki. It bought Night School Studio, Next Games and Boss Fight Entertainment previously, too.
