"At Santa Monica Studio, George Mawle worked on Kratos' weaponry, navigation, RPG systems, a myriad of combat behaviours, improvements to the scripting system to empower designers, and so much more," combat design lead Mihir Sheth said. "He was a veteran on the team who played a huge role in closing out the game and squashing bugs. Some of us named him 'Furious George' because once he was set on an idea, he couldn't be stopped."
Mawle passed away yesterday. Since then, many have took to social media to commemorate his career and to shine a light on the kind of man that he was. James Che talked about how he played volleyball, sold soap on the internet that he had made with his wife, and how he had political aspirations. "He was mad that, after becoming a US citizen, there was a minimum amount of time before you could run for electoral office," Sheth added. "He wanted to get in there as soon as possible!"
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"If you loved God of War's gameplay, George had a huge hand in it: he was the man who made the axe happen, driving nearly all of the programmming on it from start to finish," Gameplay programmer Sam Handrick said. "But, his career was decades long. Across all sorts of projects he would excitedly tell you about in loving detail. He would bring in old Gameboy games he'd made, animatedly talking about how he programmed skid marks into some car game. As a kid just starting out, he was the dev I wanted to be.
"Even in the hardest moments of game development, I got to come into the office and sit next to George Mawle, and he always made me feel like what we were doing was special, because he knew it was special."
Lead player investment designer Anthony DiMento chimed in: "If you loved the Leviathan Axe, you had love for George Mawle. The real Sindri to Vince Napoli's Brok, they're the true craftsman behind that weapon. George was all smiles and all energy and I fed off it for years sitting next to him. The only good part about him leaving SMS a few months back was that it gave us the opportunity to say goodbye and how much we'd miss being around each other. I'll aim to work more like Furious George and try to impact younger devs the way he impacted me."
"George was such an amazingly funny, smart, and warm human being. He was one of the fathers of the Leviathan feel," Creative director Cory Barlog said. "Without his curiosity and intellcet, those moments of pure joy recalling the axe would never have existed. Absolutely breaks my heart that he is gone."
Rest in peace, George Mawle.
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