Robin Hunicke, executive producer at
Journey developer thatgamecompany, is the latest to leave the studio, as she joins
Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi at Tiny Speck.
Hunicke's resignation follows several other recent departures from Thatgamecompany right after it released critically acclaimed and
commercially successful PlayStation Network game
Journey -- this morning, co-founder and president Kellee Santiago
revealed that she was leaving the Los Angeles-based company.
Two other veterans from the team, producer/designer Chris Bell and "feel engineer" John Nesky, also recently
left the developer to form The Willderness. Thatgamecompany's creative director and co-founder Jenova Chen remains at the studio, which is already working on a new project.
Hunicke worked at Thatgamecompany for nearly three years, helping it release
Journey two weeks ago. Prior to Thatgamecompany, she spent five years at Electronic Arts as a producer and a designer on projects like
Bloom Blox and
MySims.
She has taken on the position of "executive design wrangler" at the San Francisco-based office for Tiny Speck, the Vancouver-headquartered social game developer founded by creators of photo-sharing site Flickr, where Hunicke will work on its casual MMORPG
Glitch.
Hunicke will work alongside another new Tiny Speck recruit at the San Francisco branch, Justin Quimby. Previously the development director on Electronic Arts'
Spore and the engineering director for Turbine's
Dungeons and Dragons Online, Quimby joined the social game studio last month.
Tiny Speck is also home to Keita Takahashi, who created eccentric titles like
Katamari Damacy and
Noby Noby Boy at Namco Bandai before
joining the developer's Vancouver team last year.
