Headed by industry veterans, Second Dinner is a new game studio that's now working with a huge name in entertainment - Marvel.
Second Dinner announced today that they are partnering with Marvel to create a brand new title. Right now there are no details on gameplay specifics, but the game is in its prototype phase, according to the video announcement. So far Second Dinner has been working on it for around 6 months, says Chief Creative Officer Ben Brode.
A $30 million minority investment from Chinese company NetEase and the partnership with Marvel should allow them to last through most, if not the entire development process, according to the video. "...we have enough to get to the end of the first project, we think, without having to stop in the middle, to scramble for more investment..." said CEO Hamilton Chu.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te7QFZCBudY
Second Dinner was created in early 2018. Right now it's a small team of five, but they all have some serious experience. Ben Brode is at the forefront, who was the former Game Director for Hearthstone until his departure from Blizzard last year. CEO Hamilton Chu was a former Bungie employee and worked at Blizzard on titles like World of Warcraft and Hearthstone.
The rest of the team worked at Blizzard in some capacity on other big titles like Starcraft and Diablo. Still, the team is looking for other new inclusions such as a Unity Client Engineer (which means that this new Marvel game is likely running on the said engine). They also need a technical artist.
Their website says they only plan to expand their team by 10 to 15 people overall, so it'll still be a smaller team. Given that they mention on their website, "We think there’s a huge opportunity to make deep, satisfying games that are optimized for mobile", it's likely that it will be a mobile-first title. It will be interesting to see what kind of game a small indie studio with experienced veterans pump out for Marvel.
