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Elemental Games Formed By 'Just Cause' Developers, Working On New IP

by Rainier on March 15, 2022 @ 10:19 a.m. PDT

Elemental Games is a new independent game development studio, by Linus and Viktor Blomberg, founding partners of Avalanche Studios, known for developing the Just Cause series.

The founders are recognized for their prolific background in creating critically successful AAA titles, and have developed Elemental Games to pursue a new vision in open-world game development.

The founding team comes from prominent positions in companies such as Avalanche Studios, DICE, Ubisoft, and Epic. Credited contributions include titles such as: Battlefield 1, Fortnite, and the Unreal Engine, and films and series such as Star Wars: Episode 9, Mandalorian, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Elemental Games is a privately held game development company with a mission to create high-quality open-world experiences, from a creatively and financially independent position.

Co-Founder Linus Blomberg: "We will continue to evolve systemic gameplay and the open-world genre, using all the knowledge we gained from Just Cause, Mad Max, Rage2 and other Avalanche games."

But there are things Elemental Games wants to do differently, Blomberg explained: "Our years in the AAA games industry have been rewarding and given us much experience, but it has also been frustrating at times. Large companies are often constrained in their ability to break the mold, due to investors' focus on short-term financial goals. In that environment it's challenging to do explorative development and to be innovative, as well as to advance the medium in areas such as gender stereotypes and romanticisation of violence."

"Our ambition is to bring together the best of both AAA and Indie development, by having a team with extensive blockbuster experience, but driven by their personal passion for the craft, and with complete creative and financial independence.” Blomberg continues to elaborate on their development philosophy: "We've seen in the past how technology, art and design are often in conflict rather than elevating each other. So we are creating an environment where none of these disciplines dictates to the others, where we use our experience and craftsmanship in a truly collaborative way so that opportunities open up that we wouldn't even have considered in isolation."

Elemental Games are developing proprietary open-world technology alongside third-party collaborations. "The team consists of developers who can push the boundaries in their fields, and we will take advantage of that to develop proprietary open-word technology. But we also don't want to reinvent the wheel or spread ourselves too thin, so we work with external partners in areas that we don't think we can add value to. More on this will be announced during GDC next week." Blomberg concludes.

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