After a stint on Warzone, Toys for Bob is thrilled to be back on Spyro – “We were moving away from the types of games that are near and dear to our hearts”

You might know Toys for Bob from the Skylanders franchise, as well as the 2018 Spyro Reignited Trilogy and 2020’s Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. But you might not appreciate just how long this studio has been around. “We’re actually one of the longest running game development studios in North America,” studio head Paul Yan tells GamesIndustry.biz. “We just celebrated our 37 year anniversary this past April.”

It’s been a long and winding road for Toys for Bob, which spent the best part of the past two decades under the wing of Activision, during which time it pioneered the toys-to-life genre. But during the COVID pandemic, a lot of things changed for them.

“At the company level, we had a mandate to support some of the bigger blockbuster IPs,” explains Yan. “So we shifted focus to support titles like Warzone, Overwatch 2, and Modern Warfare, just to name a few. And we’re very proud of the work that we did, we learned a lot during that time. But we were moving away from the types of games that are near and dear to our hearts.

“What we’re attracted to as a team is working on games that are joyful experiences, that are optimistic, that are centred around colourful characters in handcrafted whimsical worlds, that are made for all ages. That’s what we wanted to get back to.”

Yan says that in 2023, in the midst of Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard, they came to a decision. “We had a long time to soul search about what we want to do as a team, and how do we fit in this? We figured that this was the right time to make a pretty big bold shift. So we actually proposed a pretty radical plan to leadership of both Activision and Xbox, and that was we would love to buy back independence and take back creative control, organisational control, financial control of our team, and spin off as a completely separate company so that we can focus on the types of games that are near and dear to our hearts, and also to preserve the team and all the tenure that’s been built up over the years.”

Part of the proposal was that the first game Toys for Bob would make as an independent studio would be in partnership with its old paymasters, hence the reveal this week of Spyro: A Realm Beyond, based on Activision’s IP. “So it was like, this is our plan to move to independence, and we’ll make this game for you,” says Yan. “And they were very supportive of that.”

“I think under the umbrella of Activision, their operational focus tends to be on different things at different times,” adds Lou Studdert, associate creative director at Toys for Bob. “But us being independent, we could make more of an effort of focusing our team on singular projects.”

Going solo

Even with the cushion of an Activision publishing deal behind them, going independent has been a huge step for Toys for Bob. “It is a big bet on ourselves,” says Yan.

Yan says the core team at Toys for Bob is roughly 50 people. “So we’re a small, tight knit group. The tenure of the team, if you add up all the numbers of how long we’ve worked together, is over 400 years… I like to joke that we’re like the Cheers bar, we complete each other’s sentences and stuff.” He adds that the desire to keep the team together has been a huge motivation behind going independent. “All the trust and all the years, it’s something to protect.”

“I think what makes our studio so special is how long our team has been together”

Studdert agrees: “We as developers have worked together for a long time, and on each project, obviously we’re learning something new. And I think what makes our studio so special is how long our team has been together.”

He says they operate a very flat hierarchy. “Everyone knows who everyone is, and even just splitting off to do different initiatives is something that’s tough, because you miss talking to so-and-so.”

Naturally, the kind of big titles Toys for Bob makes often require more resources, hence the studio’s use of external development studios and outsourcing. “At this point, I think that’s like a way of life,” says Yan. “But our core team is 50, and that’s kind of our constant.”

In terms of what lessons Toys for Bob learned while working on Warzone, Studdert volunteers that it helped the team develop “enhanced communication skills” while learning how to work remotely during the pandemic. “Because with a live product you had to know just so much.”

Yan is a little more succinct in his answer: “Probably the biggest lesson is we want to get back to this game [Spyro].”

Now that Toys for Bob is independent again, there are more lessons to learn. “The glitzy part of it is, ‘Oh, there’s flexibilities and freedoms’,” says Yan. “And the adult side of it is, like, how do you run a company separately? And so there’s a lot of learnings on that side operationally. How does HR work? How does payroll work? And all those types of things.”

He says the management’s aim was to make the transition as seamless as possible, and all that working from home experience during the Warzone years actually helped in that regard. “We were working remotely since 2020, so that’s a way of life, and I think that made the transition a lot easier, at least on the development side of things.”

New tricks

Work on Spyro: A Realm Beyond began around two years ago, although Yan says the idea for the game “started to bubble up in our minds” way back in 2018, when the Spyro Reignited Trilogy was released.

“This is the first original new Spyro title in almost 20 years,” says Studdert. (The last one was The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon in 2008, although of course Spyro has appeared in the Skylanders games since then.) “We are thrilled to bring back our small but mighty purple dragon to fans.”

The game will be launching in spring 2027 on Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Switch 2, and PC. “We’ve always been a team that delivers titles on multiple platforms, because the more the merrier,” says Studdert.

He notes that Toys for Bob has been listening to fans and thinking about how to evolve the Spyro gameplay. “For us, that meant amplifying the feeling of being a dragon,” he says. “And the way that we’re doing that is harnessing the power of dragon flight: the player is going to be able to go from the ground to the sky at a moment’s notice.”

Rather than having a limited glide ability, as in previous titles, Spyro now has “true freedom to fly at a moment’s notice, whenever the player would like,” says Studdert. The little dragon can light campfires with his fiery breath to create updrafts, as well as interacting with the environment to get speed boosts. Naturally, this meant building the world at a “scale that felt right for that movement” from the very beginning, says Studdert.

The Spyro games have always been about “movement and exploration and the fluidity of being able to tackle your environments,” he says. “And so for us, we wanted to make sure that that was still a foundational core to this game, no matter how much we amplified it, no matter how much we added to it.”

The original Spyro voice actor, Tom Kenny, is also back for the new game. Studdert says that Kenny was locked back into the character within seconds. “It is so ingrained in him. And he was telling us stories about how he’s hearing from the community at conventions … about how much they love Spyro and wanted a new one.”

But nearly 30 years on from the first Spyro game, the children who played the original are all grown up – so is this still a game for kids, or is it being aimed at the original fans? Studdert answers by pointing out that even the first Spyro game wasn’t just for children. “It’s always been meant to be something that has mass appeal,” he says. “And so we are still aiming for mass appeal. We are still making sure that we are making something that is accessible, and so that’s why we say it’s a great entry point for new players. But we’re also focused on that fan base, we’re also focused on the grownups who played it earlier – and we’ll have more details to share on how we’re doing that, but it is definitely top of mind.”

“It’s always been meant to be something that has mass appeal”

Yan says the Reignited Trilogy brought in the nostalgic core fans. “They’re adults now, and some of them are parents, and are passing it down to the next generation.” But he adds that the “optics” of Spyro also appeal to today’s younger players. “We think that Spyro is a timeless character.”

He also knows the audience has been waiting a long time. “The community is very vocal about wanting a new title… We always hear the tweets. We’re always listening.”

But this isn’t just a new Spyro game – it’s a template for the kind of colourful games Toys for Bob wants to make in future, after its stint on Call of Duty et al. “We want these types of games to move forward. We want Spyro to be that first one for us. That’s where we want to go.”

“Obviously, we can’t get into details on the future, but… we’re so excited about Spyro. If there are following titles that come up and we can be a part of that, we would be overjoyed. But also, we’re open… You already see the throughline for what we’ve done before, and that’s the type of trajectory that we want to be on.”

“The world could use more positive, hopeful, optimistic games that inspire laughter and love,” he concludes. “That’s what we want to make. That’s the mission of our studio.”