Back in July, Doom developers id Software laid off around a hundred people as part of wider Microsoft blood-letting. Now, a few of those devs have founded a new employee-owned studio, Hidden Horses. Their first project is Danger Pay, a single-player FPS influenced by ancient arcade blaster Smash TV (pictured) and dystopian movies such as deadly gameshow fable The Running Man – itself an influence on Smash TV.
Hidden Horses have 20 id Software alumni on the books, including former lead VFX artist Todd Boyce, principal engine programmer Dustin Land, senior AI and gameplay engineer Daniel Young, producer Andrew Willis, senior technical designer Jordan Turner, principal technical designer Tim Locke, and senior skybox artist Allison Dombek. They’re looking to make “the kind of old school shooters that we think people want more of,” in Land’s words.
All members of Hidden Horses own a share of the company, with bosses “democratically” appointed, in the words of a FAQ. “Our structure is quite flat, and we elect leaders when needed,” Willis told Vertical Slice in a separate interview. “Financially, this means we are not subject to investor demands and the preservation of the company and the jobs it sustains is paramount over needless growth and our ‘capital’ doesn’t compete for returns with other potential investments.”
All of which is obviously gesturing towards the horse elephant in the room: Microsoft, who’ve made enormous cuts to their Xbox biz in their eagerness to further supercharge their $4 trillion market value.
“We’ve replicated some things, changed some things, and added others [from our id Software days],” Willis went on. “Overall, I think top-down hierarchy is something we all have bad experiences with—we also don’t want to trend chase or make a game by focus group. We want to make the kinds of classic gameplay focused games that we would play ourselves. We think there is a market for that and our experiences with the gaming community in our past work history informs that.”
Willis’s hope is that the “flat” structure will motivate staff to work harder, because they feel like they have a meaningful say over the company’s direction. “It allows all ideas to be considered and means we don’t miss out on any contributions from our employees just because they don’t sit high up in some arbitrary hierarchy,” he said..
I’m cynical about “flat” company structures, myself. I think they are very often just an excuse for the biggest egos in a company to throw their weight around. It can work given a friendly initial mix of founders, but it gets complicated when you start hiring new people who don’t have the same chemistry. Mind you, there are no plans to expand the company dramatically for the foreseeable. “We want to create a vehicle that allows us to make games for our livelihoods, not to make crazy profits and get 100x returns,” Willis went on.
I’m also a bit leery of the fact that Hidden Horses have popped up a Kickstarter, because I’m leery about crowd-funding in general, even when Peter Molyneux isn’t involved. The studio founders are currently working on some promotional initiatives to drum up support, including a studio documentary and *squints* a promotional beer?
Still, I’m happy to hear that at least a few Cacodemon wranglers jettisoned by the big M have landed on their hooves feet. I wish Hidden Horses the best of luck with it all. As for Danger Pay, proper screens, footage and release details are to follow.