Former Vice President of EA Patrick Söderlund has shared details about his new studio – Embark and what can we expect from the studio.
Söderlund also revealed details about the humble founding of Embark three months ago:
In the first few weeks, the six of us who founded the studio huddled together in a tiny room we had managed to borrow, and worked on the stuff that any new company has to deal with: hiring people, finding an office, setting up a basic website, and getting our paperwork in order.
The developers at Embark already have a clear idea on what kind of game will they be offering, it’s a Sci-Fi game co-op and some concept art was revealed:
Embark is a really small studio an they focus is on working as efficiently as possible and to blur the line between big studios and indie studios. For their first game they went are going with Unreal Engine slightly modified by Embark.
Lots about this first game of ours will change and evolve as we progress. With that caveat out of the way, I can tell you that it’s a cooperative free-to-play action game set in a distant future, about overcoming seemingly impossible odds by working together.
After testing and trying different alternatives, we have decided to develop this game in Epic’s Unreal Engine, augmented with some of our own new technology. Our team is now having lots of fun getting to know the engine, and are making good headway.
Our goal with this terrain test was to see how far we could push visual fidelity on a large scale (256 square kilometers), with completely dynamic weather & lighting, and without having to be a huge team.
Everything in this clip was created by three people over three weeks, using real-world scanned data, procedurally placed objects, and some great tools.
Many of us here have experience from working at larger studios, with lots of support and resources. The reality of running a smaller studio means we need to work differently; we have to keep learning and come up with efficient workflows, and we always need to challenge our assumptions.
“a game set in a distant future, about overcoming seemingly impossible odds by working together”
Beyond getting started with our first game, we have one large overarching ambition; in essence, we think it’s too hard for people that aren’t professional game developers to create games, and we want to blur the line between playing and making, with games and tools that empower anyone to create.
Patrick Söderlund has promised more updates about Embark and hopefully more details about this new Sci-Fi game in development, so keep it tuned to Gaming Instincts for all the latest information from Embark.
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