Meet the PS Studio That Helped Bring God of War Ragnarok to PS5, PS4

Valkyrie Entertainment assisted Santa Monica Studio

by Sammy Barker Tue 14th Mar 2023

Game development takes an absolute eternity these days, and while you may be familiar with major first-party forces like Naughty Dog and Sucker Punch, they rely on a lot of assistance from support studios. Valkyrie Entertainment is one of those teams, a long-time PlayStation partner which was eventually welcomed into the PS Studios family in 2021.

In addition to developing games like the free-to-play Guns Up, the studio is perhaps best known for its collaborations, most recently with Santa Monica Studio on God of War Ragnarok. This video takes you behind-the-scenes, allowing you to meet several members of the team and get a feel for its office culture.

Obviously, we rarely get insight into studios like this, so it’s good to see it take the spotlight in a short trailer. It’ll be interesting to see where Valkyrie Entertainment’s resources are focused next…

[source youtube.com]

As the Editor of Push Square, Sammy has over 15 years of experience analysing the world of PlayStation, from PS3 through PS5 and everything in between. He’s an expert on PS Studios and industry matters, as well as sports games and simulators. He also enjoys RPGs when he has the time to dedicate to them, and is a bit of a gacha whale.

1
themightyant
Tue 14th Mar 2023

I love these studio profile vids. I realise they are really for recruitment, but it's nice to get a little insight into a few people and studios behind the games we love. I thank them all.

2
BeerIsAwesome
Tue 14th Mar 2023

I must point out that Guns Up! is due to go offline this time next month, so if it piques your interest, you haven't got long.

3
AK4tywill
Tue 14th Mar 2023

@BeerIsAwesome Thanks for the heads up, I do want to try that out and it's lying about in my PS+ library somewhere (probably under 'G').

4
Americansamurai1
Tue 14th Mar 2023

I mean if they want to grow the studio wouldn't mind seeing them given a gow side game to make. Would love to see a gow 2d in the style of a metrovania

5
playstation1995
Tue 14th Mar 2023

N.i.c.e. god of war ragnarok is the best game ever made. Kratos the g.o.a.t. 🐐 👑
Word up son

6
NomNom
Tue 14th Mar 2023

I'd like to see more of these for all of Sony first party studios, and Bungie

7
AndyKazama
Tue 14th Mar 2023

Imagine a deep dive of Tose. They've made hundreds of games and rarely take any credit for it.

8
johnny30
Tue 14th Mar 2023

What did they actually do? Surprising santa Monica need help, was this to prevent the crunch?

9
themightyant
Wed 15th Mar 2023

@johnny30 The core team on a giant AAA game like Ragnarok is usually a few hundred people.

But most AAA games have thousands of developers work on them in some way, the credits can often be around one to three thousand people.

Most of those are outsourced from other studios for things like art, localisation, music production etc. The full credits for Ragnarok haven’t been added online yet, but you can see the credits for God of War listed here which should give a rough guide.

https://www.mobygames.com/game/107419/god-of-war/credits/

Bear in mind ‘developers’ include almost everybody who helped get the game made from what we would usually consider a dev, to orchestral musicians, voice actors or the legal team at Sony. Not everyone would have had the same input or worked on it for years.