As we told you a few days ago, Drew Karpyshyn is leaving BioWare for the second time. In his blog post, he mentioned that he was joining Fogbank Games, that has been launched by FoxNext Games, a division of 21st Century Fox.
Now it turns out that a few of his old colleagues is also joining the studio, as Daniel Erickson will act as studio director. Daniel Erickson was the lead writer on Star Wars: The Old Republic and also worked on Dragon Age: Origins before leaving Bioware in 2012. He’s since held a number of roles, most recently at Kabam, as mobile game designer, were he hold a key role in the development of Star Wars: Uprising, that’s now shut down.
The rest of the 20-strong team includes executive producer Nathan Germick, who also joins from Kabam, and former Bioware writer Alexander Freed ( storyline writer of the imperial agent!) , who will lead the writing team. The studio is looking to double its staff size to 40 in near future.
The interesting thing to keep an eye out for is which franchise the team will be working on —and if it is a games for PC. An episodic narrative game does seem better suited to PC than mobile.
Another interesting thing, people have to wonder, is how the new studio will be affected by Disney’s impending acquisition of 21st Century Fox.
I have a feeling something is up. I won”t be surprised if Timothy Zahn suddenly also become affiliated with 21st Century Fox, in some way or another.
