Ex Blizzard Nick Carpenter, Min Kim, Rob Pardo & Nexon Min Kim start Bonfire Studios

[Morssoe]

Did they need to make new company to make their games better?

[Irian]

It'll be something to watch. I wouldn't be surprised if they fade into obscurity as many of these do, but I'll be looking to see if they actually come up with any cool new ideas. If they do some garbage like an MMORPG intended to hearken back to classic WoW then you know they're probably not worth paying much attention to.

[Coldkil]

-snip-

I am less pessimistic. I mean, i mostly agree with what you said, but hell it costs me nothing to just wait and see. Maybe something cool enough comes out - and as others said they can definitely pull out a niche game who satisfies a smaller community which will fit more the idea they look to bring forward.

Lots of stuff is just usual buzzwords for "hey, we can do it better". But if they tailor their game to a small group, then the management can be easier and more streamlined.

Sure as hell if they go for a WoW/LoL/ clone stunt, that will bomb hard imho.

[dextersmith]

To ensure our developers have a big impact we are organizing them into small but powerful and diverse superhero teams, [...] where each team is deeply connected to their players and empowered to make the best decisions to evolve their game without bureaucracies, committees or middle management in their way.

The rest of the article was useless fluff. Bold could prove problematic for investors and business longevity, fun-tunnel visioning programmers don't usually make good businessmen.

To give us the ability to operate with independence and create the games we want, we had to find amazing investors.

Sounds naive.

[purebalance]

not sure how I feel about about the name...and Riot Games fostering friendships through online gaming? Riot Games,that hosts the most toxic community known to the gaming world in LoL, fosters friendships? Does Not Compute (I'm only half kidding...)

I think Bonfire's vision is (not surprisingly) dollar signs - now that I would agree with aligning well with Riot Games. Good luck to them.

Most of the people who play LoL that use the word toxic are often the ones who ARE the toxic people in the community and Riot fosters this by allowing these toxic players to get the normal players banned or restricted.

[Katchii]

Did they need to make new company to make their games better?

They needed to make a new company to make the games they wanted in the way they wanted them to be made. When you're funded by a bigger company that has bean counters higher rank than you, you don't have the liberty of saying no to them when they ask you to do xyz. They sign your paycheck and have the ultimate say in everything.

It's not always bad, so long as the bean counters and developers have the same philosophy and agree on the general direction of the game. Problems arise when the two have differing opinions on how things should go and what should take priority. Think of a three legged race, when both parties work together, things go smoothly AND they both have fun. When you don't work together, you generally end up falling on your face, but in this case, the bigger more powerful person just takes over and forces the other guy to do what they say which is probably not fun for either person but certainly not the guy being forced.

[Gaexion Ramza Beoulve]

I wish them all the best but I'd rather see some IPs and solid ideas first. Having a million dollar logo instead is kind of a bad sign. There's plenty of no name studios that have launched with less pizazz and many games ready to play.

[Littleraven]

Best of luck to all of them. Rob and Nick have both been at Blizzard basically my entire life. I am sure a change of scenery was needed. People always like to jump on the "ship is sinking" bandwagon but when you spend 20+ years at the same place come talk to me then lol. These days you are lucky to see people spend 10 years at the same job.

[Drakpower]

If they can keep their development costs low, I'm not so sure there isn't a market for something more old school. The key is not needing a massive number of players to make a dollar.

Wasn't that the whole point of Wildstar? It was marketed as "difficult like old-school wow" and such?

[Nynax]

Wasn't that the whole point of Wildstar? It was marketed as "difficult like old-school wow" and such?

yup. And everyone but the nostalgic obsessed old-schoolers told them the player base wasn't going to be big for that kinda stuff. But as members of the nostalgic obsessed themselves they couldn't see it.

- - - Updated - - -

Best of luck to all of them. Rob and Nick have both been at Blizzard basically my entire life. I am sure a change of scenery was needed. People always like to jump on the "ship is sinking" bandwagon but when you spend 20+ years at the same place come talk to me then lol. These days you are lucky to see people spend 10 years at the same job.

It's not even encouraged anymore to stay longer than like 5-6 years. In some fields that's even looked down upon. And for many the fastest way to a pay raise is starting a new job at a higher rate, than waiting for a similar raise at your current.

[Fkiolaris]

This looks potentially interesting, but only the future will show. I believe we can exclude the possibility of a MOBA since I find it highly unlikely that Riot would sponsor a potentially competent group of developers to take a shot at their golden goose. If nothing else, an MMO would be more probable, or even a card game to compete with Hearthstone.

As for the arguments regarding Wildstar, in my opinion there were many reasons why it tanked that go beyond the simple "hardcore" aspect of the game.

[ro9ue]

Sounds naive.

What naive is you're looking at their public-facing comments as accurate to their true feelings. This is just standard PR fluff to kiss ass to their donors.

Best of luck to Rob and Nick - I'm sure they will do well. I just hope they don't fade into non-existence like other big name game devs that broke off.

[oplawlz]

Wasn't that the whole point of Wildstar? It was marketed as "difficult like old-school wow" and such?

The issues with wildstar were far reaching, and had little to do with "old school" gameplay. Casuals like to hold it up as some kind of proof that games which require some effort are doomed to failure, while ignoring all the very difficult games which have been tremendously successful.

OT: I'm always glad to see a new studio open it's doors, and the fact that they've already established investors and assumedly a sound business plan to attain those investors is promising. We'll have to see what kind of games they start peddling before deciding how exciting the news is though - as others have said, the last thing we need are more moba's, hero shooters, or generic fantasy mmo's at this point.

[Slaughty8]

Blizzard offshoots have never been very successful in the past.

Let's see how this one does.

Dude...
Runic Games - Torchlight 1, 2 and Hob devs = blizzard offshoots.
GGG - Path of Exile devs = blizzard offshoots.
Shall I add more examples?

[Edge-]

GGG - Path of Exile devs = blizzard offshoots.

Do they have any ex-Blizz folks? IIRC they were just a bunch of fanboys that made a super hardcore Diablo clone, never heard about them having ex-Blizzard staff.

[Deleted]

Hope for the ebst, but don't expect anything good.

[Slaughty8]

Do they have any ex-Blizz folks? IIRC they were just a bunch of fanboys that made a super hardcore Diablo clone, never heard about them having ex-Blizzard staff.

Oh, You are right My memory is not that great about who was where, my bad.

[Beazy]

We will see, most studios with former Blizz employees produce garbage. Just sayin`.

The way they use the word "friendships" leads me to believe they will be making rip off Facebook games with cool graphics.

[dextersmith]

What naive is you're looking at their public-facing comments as accurate to their true feelings. This is just standard PR fluff to kiss ass to their donors.

Best of luck to Rob and Nick - I'm sure they will do well. I just hope they don't fade into non-existence like other big name game devs that broke off.

I forgot about ks and the people who throw money at it, despite the nightmare stories.

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Well, some names are there - i especially like Josh Mosqueira being there.

Why? What has he done?

[glowpipe]

Wee. now we gonna get a shitty wildstar 2.