A team of developers who have previously worked at studios including Bungie, Kabam, Rockstar Games, Insomniac and Ubisoft have announced a new indie studio called Zombot Studios, Polygon reports.
Co-founded by Ben Berens, who worked on Kabam’s God Father mobile game, and Alex Chu, concept artist for titles including Halo Reach, Destiny, Tomb Raider and Dead Space, the studio plans to make AAA-quality games for mobile devices by finding the balance between console-quality and mobile-appropriate gameplay.
“One of the key things is you can’t really take a console game and push it onto a mobile device and expect to be successful,” Berens said, in part. “There has to be a lot of innovation in the way it’s designed and the way it plays to make sure it makes sense.”
“It’s not just how it plays either, but how it’s designed for the player,” Chu added. “I think the common perception is it’s really hard to make AAA-quality games on mobile, and it’s true because the console hardware is such a big piece of machine and it’s so complex. Mobile is catching up, but it’s not there yet. So I think it’s about designing games in a smart way so the presentation looks and feels AAA, but it’s not necessarily AAA in the amount of content the game has.”
The developers said that their first title is in full 3D with AAA-quality assets and design, with strategy being a core focus of the game.
“For a lot of the gameplay mechanics, we have to pull a lot from the mobile games that are out there and make sure we’re twisting those in a way that makes them more exciting and deep, rather than taking a first-person shooter and cramming that into a mobile game,” Berens said. “Obviously it’s difficult, and there’s definitely a challenge getting that there, but that’s our approach.”
(via Polygon)