Although he may not be well-known to the general public, Robert Bowling played an important role in the development of the early Call of Duty games. He worked at Infinity Ward as a Creative Strategist from 2006 to 2012. He was thus instrumental in the creation of the first Modern Warfare trilogy.

This week, Bowling announced the launch of the studio //18.bravo. In an interview with IGN, he stated his desire to move away from modern game design, notably by steering clear of the much-criticized “game-as-a-service” model.

As a result, the American company’s first project will be an FPS featuring a narrative campaign and a PvP mode. The goal is to create a game that will remain playable even if the studio were to close.

"Video games have become too commercial. As an industry, we’ve neglected our players and mistreated our teams in pursuit of ever-higher profit projections. The ‘game-as-a-service’ model is exhausting development teams, the frantic race for content in free-to-play games is wearing players down, and the AAA studio system has failed. It’s time to adopt a radically different approach; that’s what we’re doing, even if it costs us our lives."

In addition, the management team at //18.bravo will be compensated based on the success of its employees. A royalty program will be implemented, and external collaborators (contractors, actors, voice actors, etc.) will have access to profit-sharing schemes.

Finally, all resources and the developer’s code will be made open source in the event of closure.