Jade Raymond’s PS5 exclusive is reportedly an ‘online service game’

The PlayStation 5 exclusive being worked on by Jade Raymond’s Haven Entertainment will reportedly be an online game-as-a-service title.

That’s according to a new report by Italian publication Multiplayer.IT, which cites recruiters as the source of the information.

Earlier this year Raymond, the veteran producer behind Assassin’s Creed and EA’s Motive studio, left her position at Google after it decided to close its internal Stadia games development teams.

Her new studio Haven Entertainment Studios will be based in Montreal, Canada and its first game will be an original IP funded by Sony Interactive Entertainment, the pair announced in March.

According to Linkedin, Haven has already hired a group of veterans from around the Montreal development scene, including Former Assassin’s Creed series producer Sebastien Pule and lead writer Corey May, Watch Dogs 1 and 2’s art director Mathieu Leduc and Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s gameplay director Daniel Drapeau.

Although no details have been publicly shared about Haven’s PS5 project, Raymond has dropped plenty of hints that she’d like to create a persistent online experience.

In a blog post published last month, the studio head wrote that she believed “fans, not professional developers” would drive the hit game IPs of the future.

“Hit franchises of the future need to be designed to ensure quality and canon even when — especially when — we hand over ownership to the fans,” Raymond wrote. “Fans will have the creative power to steer the story, shape the game universe, and spur virality from the inside out.”

She added: “The pivot of many of the game industry’s biggest franchises from premium launches to the games as a service (GaaS) model — Grand Theft Auto to Grand Theft Auto Online, for example, or Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six to Siege) — was one important step toward two-way engagement, but the fully realized vision for this new generation of highly social, tech-savvy, creative multitaskers is a network model.

“To hold people’s attention now, you need the power of the network. Game content needs to matter to people at their core. How do you make content really matter to your audience? You make it all about them; you allow them to become the creators themselves.

“Game studios are no longer insular creative teams broadcasting to millions of faceless ‘consumers.’ In this new world, the way to gain relevance is to flip that model upside down — to network it — so that the fans are now co-creators driving the content, building the narrative, and steering the pursuits of the creative team.”

Raymond is best known for her time as an executive producer at Ubisoft Montreal between 2004 and 2010, where she helped create the Assassin’s Creed series.

The industry veteran later formed Splinter Cell: Blacklist developer Ubisoft Toronto, before joining EA to create its Motive studio, which would go on to make Star Wars: Squadrons. However, Raymond left EA in 2018, with Motive having not yet shipped its own fully-led game.