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Left 4 Dead creator heading up Bad Robot's new games studio

Left 4 Dead creator heading up Bad Robot's new games studio

One of the creators of Left 4 Dead Michael Booth is heading up Bad Robot's brand new internal games studio.

He takes on the role of general manager of this new developer, Bad Robot Games Studio, and will be reporting to the CEO of Bad Robot Games, Anna Sweet. She was appointed to this role in July of this year. Moving forward, Bad Robot Games' business will be two-fold; Bad Robot Games Studio is going to be focusing on in-house development, while Bad Robot Games is also going to be handling co-development with external partners.

Bad Robot Games was set up in 2018 with Chinese giant Tencent and Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment helping fund the new division. Bad Robot is, of course, the film and TV production company set up by JJ Abrams of Lost and Star Wars fame.

Booth is best known for creating the Left 4 Dead and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero at the studio he helped found, Turtle Rock. That company was bought by Valve in 2007. He worked at the firm until 2012, before taking a break and eventually landing a game director role at Blizzard.

In 2015, Facebook snapped him up to work in its virtual reality business. Earlier this year, he joined the board of VR developer Resolution Games.

"My career has been driven by a desire to innovate new ways of bringing people together for epic adventures online, leaving them with exciting stories they can tell their friends afterwards," said Booth.

"The games I create center around people working together to survive and thrive in fantastic worlds, which seems an excellent fit for J.J. Abrams' approach to moviemaking. As a huge fan of J.J.'s work, I'm incredibly excited by the unique opportunity to create something new at Bad Robot Games Studios in collaboration with the world-class talent at Bad Robot."


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PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.