I found the idea of The Initiative to be a little too stacked on paper. They bring all these big names in but will it even yield the expected results? I thought I heard in past they'd be more of an R&D type studio whatever that would mean. Maybe their job is simply to create the framework of a project and pass the task off to a studio fit to finish it, like they are doing now.
We have seen cherished game devs in past split from the studios they managed to start their own and go nowhere. Sometimes studios get on just fine in their absence, or improve, or go down. But I think it says something about the importance of a team's synergy. That just can't be achieved by stacking celebrated names together, rather it seems counter-intuitive in ways as I expect passionate creators trying to craft a vision to butt heads with each other.
Platinum Games might be one of the shining exceptions of creators leaving a publisher to start their own studio. Though their quality is hit and miss I mostly attribute that from juggling too much work. But when they hit it out of the ball park, I feel that comes largely from the fact their team isn't just comprised of veteran creators, but their team being largely comprised of former Capcom employees when they worked under the Clover Studios banner. They brought with them their synergy intact.
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