Media Molecule’s David Smith, the last co-founder still at the studio, has announced he’s leaving the company.
The developer shared the news on its socials today, with a statement from Smith himself. He says he’s leaving Media Molecule to pursue “personal creative projects”. Here’s the full statement:
20 years ago I founded Mm with some wonderful people. It feels like only yesterday that I was noodling away on the prototype that grew into LittleBigPlanet. Today I’m announcing that I am leaving Mm to focus on personal creative projects.
Most of the Mm founders came from Lionhead, a chaotic petri dish of creativity, and I couldn’t have wished for a better training ground. Strongly influenced by that unconventional creativity, Mm was born of a restless yearning to make exciting new experiences that we deeply believe in. We love making games, and so we naturally wanted to share that joy of creativity with our players. I’m proud to say that of all the games we’ve made, and are making, the spirit of creativity and joyfulness suffuses them all. This has been an unregrettable use of those years.
More recently, I’ve been feeling a growing itch to explore truly wild ideas and make things based on my personal whimsy. Though I still greatly enjoy the creative dynamic of working at Mm, there simply aren’t enough hours in the day to work at Mm and on my personal projects, without entirely giving up on pursuing that mythical creature called “work-life balance”. So I’ve made the difficult decision to step away from Mm.
I hope to be involved with Mm in future, and to drop in from time to time. I greatly enjoy working with the team. It’s a very different bunch to what we had 20 years ago, but the positivity and free exchange of ideas remains true to the founding spirit of the company. I’m leaving the company in very good hands.
Smith co-founded Media Molecule in January of 2006 alongside Mark Healey, Kareem Ettouney, and Alex Evans — all of whom have also moved on from the studio in the wake of Dreams’ release.
Siobhan Reddy, head of the studio, has been with the company almost as long as its founders, and will now be the longest-serving member of the team.
We had the pleasure of interviewing Smith around the time that PSVR support was added to Dreams, which you can read through the link.
Media Molecule is currently working on a brand new IP, but it’s still shrouded in mystery. Creative director John Beech, who spearheaded the excellent Dreams game Tren, will be leading the charge.
What are your thoughts on this news? Discuss in the comments section below.
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Stephen has been part of the Push Square team for over six years, bringing boundless enthusiasm and a deep knowledge of video games to his role as Assistant Editor. Having grown up playing every PlayStation console to date, he’s developed an eclectic taste, with particular passion for indie games, arcade racers, and puzzlers. He’s also our go-to guy for Sonic-related matters, much to his delight/chagrin.