Bonfire Studios has been announced and features an all-star team of developers including Rob Pardo (ex-Blizzard), Min Kim (ex-Nexon), and a pair of other ex-Blizzard developers, Josh Mosquiera (Diablo) and Matthew Versluys. Bonfire Games has been fully funded to the tune of $25M through a joint investment by Riot Games and Andreessen Horowitz.
From the New York Times:
For now, Mr. Pardo says he is focused entirely on hiring people to begin generating ideas and making game prototypes. Min Kim, a former executive with Nexon, an Asian game developer, and several former colleagues from Blizzard joined him as members of Bonfire’s founding team. He wants Bonfire’s games to recreate the social connections that many players formed when banding together in clans in World of Warcraft, a game that allows players to fraternize with one another online.
From the Bonfire Studios site:
The most important part of our quest is WHY are we doing this? We can’t say we are going to Mount Doom to save the world, but we do think deeply about what we love about games. One of the most rewarding parts of creating any game, be it a D&D campaign or a massive persistent world, is the connection you have to the players themselves. You get to see the player’s reactions, you get to respond to them and make their experience better over time. It’s like the warmth of friends around a bonfire, sharing stories.
And that’s why we named our studio BONFIRE. The bonfire is a metaphor for the experiences we wish to create. We want friends to connect through our games and share amazing experiences, tell the stories, and come closer together.
Read more at the links above.
