Media company AGBO has launched a new Innovation department tasked with building proprietary creative tools that can be used across “diverse platforms”
Thus far, the company founded by Joe and Anthony Russo (of MCU fame) hasn’t dabbled into games. But their press release notes the department covers different media and platforms, which games are becoming a key part of for companies’ transmedia plans.
The department is split into three teams: creative, immersive technology, and production technology. Immersive technology will be headed up by Josh Andersen, who previously worked as a lead programmer at Epic Games.
During his Epic tenure, he worked on the PC and iPhone version of Fortnite, along with the Infinity Blade trilogy and Shadow Complex. His team will “support [AGBO’s] expressions of its assets across different mediums.”
Andersen marks the second hire at AGBO to previously come from Epic. Donald Mustard, creative director for Fortnite before he exited the studio last year, joined AGBO as a partner not long after.
Heading up the Production Tech team is Glenn Derry, chief technology architect on Avatar and Minority Report. The release notes his introduction of the concept of “virtual production” to filmmaking and video game production.
Finally, Creative is managed by Ryan McNeely and John Cranston. Their virtual production studio VisualCreatures previously worked with Epic, Netflix, and Apple, and was acquired by AGBO last year.
In the press release, Mustard notes these teams will help AGBO’s “evolution as a modern studio. With Jake at the helm, this team will fulfill AGBO’s long-term ambition of developing wholly original IP from scratch in-house.”
AGBO’s desire to launch new properties was previously noted when MapleStory creator Nexon invested $400 million into the studio. At the time, there was hope the investment would partly lead to virtual experiences, but nothing has come of it yet.