Epic Games has just bolstered its staff with an industry great. Jason West, co-founder of Infinity Ward and Respawn Entertainment, has apparently been quietly hired by the company.
Industry insider Geoff Keighley broke the news of West’s hiring over Twitter. Additionally, West has apparently been reporting to the Epic Games offices for about a month now, according to Keighley.
Jason West has provided a sizeable contribution to the first-person shooter genre. Before co-founding Infinity Ward alongside Vince Zampella and Grant Collier, West had been part of the team that worked on Medal of Honor: Allied Assault at 2015, Inc. for Electronic Arts. It was from this team that the original Infinity Ward staff was born.
At Infinity Ward, West and the rest of the team created the vaunted Call of Duty series for Activision. This series helped usher in a wave of military-themed shooters in the late 2000s.
After a falling out with Activision, West and Zampella founded Respawn Entertainment. There they created the Titanfall series of shooters for EA. The series introduced a unique mechanic where players could summon giant mechs, while at the same time improving on the traversal mechanics they first developed in the more modern Call of Duty games.
Respawn’s latest project in the in the Titanfall franchise is the hit battle royale game Apex Legends. The latest game takes the far future setting of the franchise and uses that to create a unique, hero-based, spin on the battle royale genre.
According to Keighley, Epic Games has brought in West to work on their game development efforts. Considering his pedigree, it’s not hard to see why. The question now is whether Epic brought West in to work on Fortnite, the main competitor of Respawn’s Apex Legends, or if he’s working on a new project altogether.
