Only yesterday, former BioWare general manager Casey Hudson announced that he was forming a new development studio called Humanoid Studios. And earlier today, more industry veterans from a major developer have said they're doing the same thing. Specifically, these veterans come from Blizzard and their new studio is coming about through a partnership with Tencent. They've even already announced their first project.
The studio is named Uncapped Games and has been founded by David Kim and Jason Hughes. Kim originally worked for THQ for over a year, where he served as a senior game balancer on titles like Company of Heroes. He then left in 2007 to join Blizzard, where he worked for 13 and a half years, working on the likes of World of Warcraft, StarCraft 2, and the upcoming Diablo 4.
Hughes, coincidentally enough, also worked at THQ, although he was there for four years and didn't join Blizzard until 2015. He served as a game producer on Diablo 3 and also went on to contribute work on Diablo 4. Their new studio is based in Playa Vista, California, and its first project will be a new real-time strategy game for PC, a genre Kim as been eager to get back to.
Speaking with GamesIndustry.biz, Kim said that he's wanted another shot at the RTS genre for almost a decade, but he needed the right company to work with. That company has turned out to be Tencent. More specifically Tencent subsidiary Lightspeed and Quantum Studios, which helped set up the studio and bring in the right people for the job.
This includes Hughes as well as a third former Blizzard employee, Zhongshan Zhang. He worked for Blizzard from 2005 to 2013 as a senior graphics programmer on StarCraft 2 and would eventually join Tencent in 2019 as a principal engineer. Hughes has described the combination as a "perfect storm," with Kim adding that even Lightspeed head Jerry Chen is on the same page as them, only asking that they focus on making a great RTS.
Exact details on the game itself are scarce, but Kim has shared his intentions for it. Namely, he wishes to make it as action-packed as possible, but accessible to a new crowd. He clarifies that this doesn't mean dumbing the game down for newbies but lowering the barrier to entry. He wants to make a game where victory comes from being good at strategy and countering the opposition rather than by being able to click really fast.
Sources: GamesIndustry.Biz, IGN