Santa Monica Studio is a video game company that works for Sony Interactive Entertainment and is located in Los Angeles, California. It is most famous for creating the God of War game series. The studio was started in 1999 by Allan Becker and was first 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 environment of Sony Computer Entertainment in Foster City. The studio was first based in an office near the developer Naughty Dog before moving to a brick building in the suburbs of Santa Monica, California. This location was used for fifteen years. For its first game, the racing title Kinetica, Santa Monica Studio chose not to use the PlayStation console but instead developed the game for the upcoming PlayStation 2. A game engine was created to improve the performance of the PlayStation 2 for Kinetica and future projects. While the game was being developed during the studio’s early stages, producer Shannon Studstill focused on ensuring the game was released on time and within budget to prove the studio’s reliability to Sony. Kinetica was released in 2001, meeting its deadline and staying within the planned budget. After its release, Santa Monica Studio began work on its next project, God of War, using the engine from Kinetica.

The External Development group, a separate department within Santa Monica Studio, acted as both a publisher and a support team for independent game studios, including Thatgamecompany and its game Journey. Other supported teams included Broodworks, Eat Sleep Play, Fun Bits, Giant Sparrow, Incognito Entertainment, Q-Games, and Ready at Dawn. Becker left Santa Monica Studio in 2011. By March 2012, Becker joined Sony’s Japan Studio, while Shannon became Santa Monica Studio’s "Senior Director of Product Development." In January 2014, Santa Monica 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, was about four to five times larger than 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’s relocation was completed on July 22, 2014, along with a new logo named SMS "Vanguard." In 2016, Santa Monica Studio closed the External Development group and returned the rights to What Remains of Edith Finch and Wattam to their developers, as well as the 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.