Former Dragon Age Creative Director Mike Laidlaw left Bioware in 2017, after developing for the studio for 14 years. Since then, he was working at Ubisoft until he left in February of this year.
The next entry in Bioware’s Dragon Age series is in development, but the game isn’t expected to release until 2022 .
NEWS
Mike Laidlaw, the former Dragon Age creative director, announced the creation of a new Quebec City-based studio called Yellow Brick Games.
Laidlaw is joined by Thomas Giroux, Jeff Skalski, and Frédéric St-Laurent B. St-Laurent B. will be the game director for the first project created by the studio. According to IGN , these developers worked on projects like Dragon Age , Mass Effect , Watch Dogs , and Assassin’s Creed . The total number of employees working at the studio is 15.
Laidlaw serves as the studio’s Chief Creative Officer. Giroux is the Chief Executive Officer, while Skalski is the Chief Operating Officer.
The studio describes itself as a “Triple-I” development team. Its website reads:
Based in Quebec City, Yellow Brick Games was founded by video games industry veterans with the goal of leadership in the new trend of Triple-I development: focused, high-quality titles that put the player experience first.
In a press release today, Laidlaw said:
The market for independently produced games is growing rapidly and the technology is keeping pace. Small, diverse teams can now create high-quality experiences. For veterans of big-studio productions like myself and much of our team, this is the perfect time to get back to a small, agile, and highly motivated group. We want our games here at Yellow Brick to take potentially millions of players on wonderous journeys, and we want every member of our team to have a direct impact on the new worlds we’re creating.
WHAT THIS MEANS
Yellow Brick Games’ decision to develop Triple-I games signifies a trend in the industry to develop “big budget” independent games. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a recent example of such a game. These types of games might appear to be AAA games on the surface, but are actually created by small, independent studios.
Their games will likely be influenced by their previous experience working on large open-world games. With games like Watch Dogs , Dragon Age , Mass Effect , and Assassin’s Creed under their belts, it’s reasonable to expect the studio to develop an open-world game. Of course, these developers may want to branch out and create entirely new types of experiences.
PLAYSTATION Writer