Brian Fleming, co-founder of Ghost of Yotei studio Sucker Punch, is leaving the studio

Brian Fleming, the co-founder and longtime studio head of PlayStation’s Ghost of Yotei studio, Sucker Punch, is stepping down from his position.

Starting January 1, longtime creative and technical leaders Jason Connell and Adrian Bentley will step into new roles as studio heads, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced on Tuesday.

Jason served as co-creative director on the Ghost franchise, and Adrian, as Technical Director, led the studio’s engineering and production efforts.

Sucker Punch has been a PlayStation first-party studio since 2011 and is known for the Sly Cooper, InFamous, and Ghost of Tsushima.

Speaking to VGC earlier this year, Brian Fleming discussed Sucker Punch’s upcoming 30^th anniversary and the studio’s determination to stay relatively small in triple-A terms.

“The truth is that whatever we do next, whether it’s continuing Ghost or going back to Sly, the decision is really more limited by, again, our cherishing of focus and time to iterate, which means that we really can only do one thing at a time,” he said.

“If we were good at juggling four projects, yeah, we’d have a remaster, and let’s go do one of those, and one of those, and do some fan request, that would be really popular.

“But we only get to do one thing. So it kind of has to be your best idea, right? And that’s really clarifying. It’s not like there aren’t 15 good ideas. But you only get to do one. And by the way, you only get to do one about every five years.

“So that choice is really important. I mean, that is choosing your college and your major every five years… that’s a really big decision, so you better think carefully about it.”