Santa Monica Studio is a video game developer owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment and located in Los Angeles. It is most famous for creating the God of War series. The studio was started in 1999 by Allan Becker and was originally based in Santa Monica, California. In 2014, the studio moved to Playa Vista.

History

Santa Monica Studio was founded in 1999 by Allan Becker, a long-time Sony employee who wanted to leave the corporate group in Foster City, California. The studio began in an office near the developer Naughty Dog before moving to a brick building in the suburbs of Santa Monica, California. This building was used for fifteen years. For its first game, Kinetica, a racing title, the studio chose to skip the PlayStation console and instead created the game for the upcoming PlayStation 2. A game engine was developed to improve the performance of the PlayStation 2 for Kinetica and future games. While the game was being made during the studio's early growth phase, producer Shannon Studstill focused on ensuring the game was released on time and within budget to show Sony that the studio could deliver quality work. Kinetica was released in 2001, meeting the deadline and staying under budget. After its release, the studio moved on to its next project, God of War, using the engine from Kinetica.

The External Development group, a separate department within Santa Monica Studio, acts as both a publisher and a supporter for independent game studios. It helped studios such as Thatgamecompany, which created the game Journey, and others like Broodworks, Eat Sleep Play, Fun Bits, Giant Sparrow, Incognito Entertainment, Q-Games, and Ready at Dawn. In 2011, Becker left Santa Monica Studio. By March 2012, he joined Sony's Japan Studio, while Shannon became Santa Monica Studio's "Senior Director of Product Development." In January 2014, the studio announced it would move from its Penn Station offices to The Reserve, a 20-acre facility on Jefferson Boulevard in Playa Vista, Los Angeles. The new office space, covering 30,000 square feet (2,800 square meters), was "four or five times the size" of the previous Santa Monica office, according to Studstill. At the time, the studio employed about 240 people. In February 2014, an undisclosed number of employees were laid off due to the cancellation of a new intellectual property project, including Stig Asmussen, who led the canceled project. The studio completed its move to The Reserve on July 22, 2014, along with a new logo called SMS "Vanguard." In 2016, Santa Monica Studio closed the External Development group and returned the rights to games such as What Remains of Edith Finch and Wattam to their developers. It also transferred publishing rights to Annapurna Interactive, where the group's employees had moved.

In March 2020, Studstill left Santa Monica Studio to lead a new development studio under Stadia. Later, Yumi Yang, a long-time employee and former director of product development at Santa Monica Studio, became the studio's new head.