The Gears of War franchise is now in the hands of Microsoft, who purchased the rights from Epic Games and passed development duties to Black Tusk Studios (who was developing a separate, unannounced IP that was teased at E3 2013).
Now, two new job listings have appeared in the wake of the announcement, with Black Tusk searching for a Lead Writer who can “help us bring Microsoft’s next big IP to life. This individual will help us develop the characters, story arc, emotional tone, pacing, dialogue, and flavor of a story that will shape the spirit of this new franchise.”
Interested candidates will be required to “Act as a champion of story, characters, and emotional engagement across the game and game team,” “Create a cast of distinctive, engaging, and imperfect characters that players love (or love to hate),” along with defining “A compelling story that takes the player on a hero’s journey, with a keen eye to story structure and pacing.”
A job listing for a Senior Online Engineer has also been posted and it indicates that the next Gears of War could integrate SmartGlass. Candidates “will be responsible for design and implementation of robust, secure, and scalable web services, and deployment processes to support customer-facing applications. The successful candidate must have strong communication skills and be able to work side by side with programmers, designers and production staff, and be passionate about owning a reliable high-traffic web application to support console and multi-screen end points.”
The next Gears of War will be led by former series producer Rod Fergusson, who has joined Microsoft to head up the game. What are your thoughts thus far on the direction being taken? Let us know below.