Amy Hennig, formerly creative director of the Uncharted series of games, has left EA to set up an independent development studio.

Hennig forged a formidable reputation as Naughty Dog’s creative director, working on the first four Uncharted games, before leaving in 2014 to join the EA-owned Visceral Games and work on a Star Wars project. But EA shut down Visceral in October 2017, moving development of the still-shadowy Star Wars game to EA Vancouver.

Now, speaking to Eurogamer at this week’s Gamelab event in Barcelona, Hennig has revealed that she left EA in January this year, and is in the process of setting up an independent developer. She said: “I have not worked at EA since January, technically, legally. People were immediately asking them ‘Is Amy working with you?’ and the answer was ‘Well, we’re in negotiations…’ like, hmm. It made it awkward because it was like, ‘I never got the chance to announce that I’m not at EA so I need to just pull off that band-aid at some point’ — but also had nothing to announce. It makes it sound like I just went home! But I’m doing all this stuff, working on all kinds of things.

“I just started my own small little independent studio and am consulting with some people. I’m hoping to bring some people on board, I would love to have a little company of about six to eight people, 15 at the most, and do some more projects, do some VR stuff — I’m consulting with some VR companies and doing a ton of research, because I haven’t played a lot to immerse myself in it. So yeah, I’m not doing anything Star Wars. And, who knows what the future may hold, but that project is on the shelf now.”

Regarding the StarWars game she was making at Visceral, Hennig said: “The Vancouver studio is working on something pretty different. Once you go more open-world it’s such a different game to the one we were making. Everybody loved what we were doing and I’d love to see us resurrect that somehow, but it’s complicated.”