Some big news yesterday out of Stockholm as Erik Odeldahl, former design director on the recently-released Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, has announced his resignation from developer DICE. Odeldahl is co-founding a new game development studio with former Rovio developer Oskar Burman and Kristoffer Benjaminsson.
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The new Stockholm studio is called Fast Travel Games, and as Odeldahl states, it will focus entirely on creating games for virtual reality. Burman, Fast Travel Games’ CEO, adds:
"We feel that VR offers limitless possibilities, and that its inherent qualities make it perfectly suited for storytelling and socially rich experiences. We're looking to define a new genre of games for VR. Our games will focus strongly on narratively rich worlds full of possibilities for exploration and social gameplay, where players can cooperate, share worlds and experiences, and play together."
Benjaminsson, the chief technical officer at Fast Travel Games, previously worked as the senior development director of Frostbite Labs, EA’s recent initiative created to explore new ground in virtual reality development using the Frostbite engine. Odeldahl, working on Mirror’s Edge Catalyst at the time, previously commented on that series’ appropriateness for being played in virtual reality: "I think the important thing here is that VR is such a different thing. I mean if we do it, we should do it right. So, it's going to take research and it's going to take a proper implementation for it."
Burman says Fast Travel Games plans to expand the team to around 10 people, and also mentions that the company has advisors on board from Paradox, Avalanche, Microsoft and Mojang. We look forward to seeing what the new studio has planned.
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