Over the past two years, we’ve seen the emergence of new studios funded by veterans of Blizzard. Although their teams and projects are different, companies like Dreamhaven, Frost GIant Y Warchief Gaming have in common the connection to the Blizzard way: a love of fantasy worlds, an interest in games that bring players together, and a desire to work in small teams. Now the once Blizzard and Epic programmer, Matt Schembari, joins these entrepreneurs and spawns a new team: Lightforge Games.
Schembari has been with Blizzard eight years, and then five at Epic Games. His four Lightforge co-founders also hail from both companies. We talk about the programmer And Hertzka, the producer Nathan Fairbanks and the artist Glenn Rane, in addition to the marketing director Marc Hutcheson. They have actually been in the studio for a year, but have not released a pledge so far. They now have 11 workers, all from the same business environment.
What does Lightforge work on? Schembari has not said anything so far, beyond that they are dedicated to the RPG genre. And he often says that they are going to use their experience with the companies they worked with before to create something good:
“When you watch titles like Minecraft or Dungeons & Dragons, you realize that what they have in common is that they bring people together, they are games that keep us connected, they create worlds together, they create stories together in a particular way. They are types of games that we love, and we have experience and we know how to do them. We share the vision that we can reshape RPGs through social and creative features.“
A drastic difference between Lightforge and the big studios is the structure: Lightforge is totally remote working. Schembari has said that it is a way of maintaining the values of the study. “Embrace empathy“Remote work, he says, is the studio’s way of ensuring employees are healthier and happier.
“There is nothing more disruptive to a person’s life than asking them to move for work. Now that we are in the right technological and cultural moment, it is not necessary to do it more. That is why our decision from the beginning was to do it from home. Because previous changes destabilized us.”
We will be very attentive to what the new study brings us.
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