Yellow Brick Games has been revealed as a new studio from some veterans all across the video games industry. The team is based out of Quebec, Canada, and led by former Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw. After 14 years overseeing the popular fantasy franchise with BioWare and EA, Laidlaw was most recently working as a creative director at Ubisoft, as well.
Now, joined by roughly a dozen other veterans from the industry, Yellow Brick Games is formed. Though Quebec is where the studio technically sits physically, indications are they will operate with a remote element. Another industry vet on the team, Frédéric St-Laurent B, said our current circumstances in the world have "rewritten the rules" of how video game studios operate and allow for the team to recruit prospective employees from all over the world.
In total, the team sits at about 15 developers right now, including industry veterans from Ubisoft, Bioware, Electronic Arts and Activision Blizzard.
As for what kind of games the team may create, Yellow Brick said in a statement (thanks GI.Biz), they hope to "emphasize a 'back-to-basics approach" and move away from AAA-level games and the work routines which they sometimes seem to demand. "We have learned a lot from working on world-class, multi-year projects with thousands of colleagues and we want to take a different approach," said co-founder and COO Jeff Skalski. "Leveraging a smaller talented team where people come first, we will create amazing worlds and experiences for all others to enjoy. The market is moving fast, and we have no desire to play catchup and chase it when we can influence where it goes. These goals drove us to found Yellow Brick Games."
While their debut game hasn't been revealed and likely won't be for some time, the team is already at work on whatever the project may be. It seems likely that will change quite a bit between now and when we see its debut, potentially several years from now. Then again, with a look to distance themselves from the AAA roadmap, perhaps it won't be as long as one might expect.
