Video game designers may be the world’s most anonymous creative professionals, at least among the makers of mass entertainment. That’s because game players tend to extend their loyalty to favorite franchises or proven studios rather than to individual designers.

But this isn’t always the case. Vince Zampella and his colleagues at Respawn Entertainment, a new studio founded by veterans of the military shooters Call of Duty and Medal of Honor, have quickly become celebrities in the industry. Last week, they released the year’s most anticipated and talked-about game, Titanfall, a multiplayer science-fiction shooter that pits people and giant robots against one another in a crucible of frustration, accomplishment and exhilaration that players describe with the word “fun.”

The marketing dollars and prowess of Microsoft, which is betting on Titanfall to help its Xbox One console overtake Sony’s PlayStation 4 in sales, have something to do with the newfound fame for Mr. Zampella and Respawn. Yet the faith that players have in the work of these designers — on titles like Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Call of Duty and, especially, the billion-dollar Modern Warfare series — has played a much larger role in the hype. The success of Respawn and the excitement over Titanfall represent one of the few times that a new studio has garnered considerable attention based on the reputation of its designers for doing good work elsewhere.

Titanfall is skillfully made with frenetic six-on-six battles among 12 players, each of whom controls an ersatz Boba Fett (the jetpack bounty hunter from the entirely unrelated “Star Wars” universe), who can run on walls, jump twice in the air before landing and summon a massive robot from the sky — the titular Titanfall — that he or she can then enter and control like a humanoid tank. The physical spaces are large and varied, with enclosed areas and buildings that can be entered only by the pilots, juxtaposed with open plains where the titans clash. A pilot can, however, take down a titan with enough skill, including a move called the “rodeo” that is executed by leaping onto the machine’s back and firing a weapon into its circuitry.