14 DAY TRIAL // Alex Seropian, who is one of the co-founders of well-known Halo developer Bungie, has announced that he has set up a new video game development studio, called Industrial Toys.
It which will apparently be focused on the development of mobile games that cater to the needs of the hardcore crowd.
The stated aims of the new development studio is to move mobile gaming from “inferior gameplay, graphics, and elementary mechanics” and towards “intricately advanced layers of narrative and gameplay,” that will be designed with the free-to-play model in mind.
Alex Seropian has been with Valve since the company was founded and worked as Chief Executive Officer for stints during the period when the developer created Marathon and the first game in the Halo series.
He was one of the negotiators who worked on the Microsoft sale which happened in 2000 and then left Bungie in order to put up his own projects.
He created a new studio called Wideload Games, which was acquired by the Disney Interactive Studios, where Seropian has headed the core games division.
He was replaced from that position by Bill Roper, best known for working at Blizzard North and then at Cryptic Studios.
At Industrial Toys he is joined by another former Bungie man, Brent Pease, who will be the CTO of the new company after working for some time at DreamWorks Animation.
A statement from the new company reads, “We believe in the future of mobile. We are driven to innovate beyond industry standards and trust in these inherent truths: that the future of gaming is about being accessible without sacrificing quality.”
At the moment Bungie is no longer involved with the Halo series, which has been completely taken over by 343 Industries and Microsoft, and is linked by a long-term development deal to publisher Activision.
The company is believed to be working on a new MMO game that uses first-person shooter mechanics and a science fiction universe.