Say Hello to Robert Bowling’s New Studio

Robotoki is the name of Robert Bowling’s new game studio. Former Community Manager and Creative Strategist for Infinity Ward for seven years; Bowling left the Call of Duty franchise to start something new.

I first heard of Mr. Bowling by first jumping on the hype train for COD4: Modern Warfare in 2007. I read about him on his blog and really loved the passion that showed in interviews/videos on the game. Once Twitter got big, I followed him right away,@fourzerotwo, for all the up to date Call of Duty news. He answered questions on a daily basis and if he couldn’t respond to each one, he tried to read them all.

Once MW2 rolled around, Call of Duty was just getting bigger and bigger each year; his Twitter exploded with questions/complaints. There were some nasty Tweets that Bowling had to respond to and he didn’t deserve those, but he kept on keeping on; he was the middle man between the community and the dev team, he had to take it. Hate or love Call of Duty, you can’t deny that Bowling loved what he did and kept on going despite the fact that most of his angry followers didn’t know what a Creative Strategist/Community Manager did, up until now that is.

When the news came that Robert left Activision and Infinity Ward, my jaw dropped. I always bought the Infinity Ward CoD games since the quality of those games appealed to me more. The Modern Warfare series was just cool, not to mention refreshing from the regular WWII Call of Duty games prior. Bowling was the voice of the franchise for me, and I have to say, now that he left the franchise, I’m not sure I’ll stock around for future installments. Is this all due to Bowling leaving Infinity Ward really? Probably not, but I’m getting a little burnt out and I think he was too.

Game Informer had an e-mail chat with Bowling yesterday, asking what he was up to. The answer was that he was creating something new and exciting, as was alluded to on his Twitter page. What exactly was not known, but we now know that Bowling created his own video game studio, Robotoki.

“Robotoki is focused on being a developer development studio that just happens to make games”

“We are focused on our team first and everything else second, because I believe as an industry; we have a lot to learn on how to treat talent. While we continue to out stride film and music entertainment in other areas, we are falling severely behind in how to properly inspire and support our creative talent”

He likes games, if you do as well, send him an e-mail or a tweet

Check out the full interview HERE, there’s a lot of good stuff in that post including a small tease about Robotoki’s first project. If you’ve never heard of Robert Bowling before hearing of him leaving Call of Duty, check out his blog and the Facebook page for Robotoki. The studio is even hiring for it’s first project if you’re interested and living in the Los Angeles area and a fan of the guy or just happen to love  video games.

VelocityGamer and OnlySP will keep you up to date on future Robotoki news!