Joseph Staten was known for his long career at Bungie and Microsoft, as he worked on games from Halo 2 to Sunset Overdrive. However, after just revealing that he was leaving Microsoft, he has already announced his new gig at Netflix Games.
Staten took to Twitter to reveal his new position after only confirming his departure from Microsoft in early April. After noting that he loved “collaborating with others to build worlds filled with iconic characters, deep mysteries, and endless adventures,” he said he had joined Netflix Games as a creative director on a multiplatform AAA game that’s also a new IP.
Of course, since it’s a new IP, it’s impossible to tell what this mystery title will be. It’s also unclear what team he joined. It’s possible that he’ll be part of Chacko Sonny’s studio in California that is developing a game that looks to be a shooter, but that is obviously unconfirmed. Netflix has a suite of studios, too, like Oxenfree developer Night School, Cozy Grove developer Spry Fox, a new team in Finland, and Next Games, a mobile studio that’s also based in Finland.
Staten worked at Bungie for well over a decade and started out on some of the studio’s earlier titles like Myth II‘s Chimera expansion, Oni, and the original Halo. He worked quite expensively on that latter series and filled various roles on Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo: ODST, and Halo: Reach. He even wrote Halo: Contact Harvest, a novel set 27 years before the first game.
Staten left Bungie in 2013 to work at Microsoft where he also wore different hats on games like Crackdown 3, ReCore, Quantum Break, and Killer Instinct to name a few. He joined 343 Industries in August 2020 and got back in touch with the Halo series to get Halo: Infinite across the finish line.
