Bungie founder and industry veterans found new studio

Look North World is a new LA-based studio founded by a group of former EA, Disney, Kongregate, and Bungie developers.

The details:

• The new studio was founded by Jay Pecho, Patrick Moran, Kyle Marks, Aaron Marroquin, Prashant Patil, and Bungie founder Alex Seropian, and has already raised over $2.2 million in funding. Seropian will lead the studio as CEO, Morgan as COO, and Pecho as CTO. Its creative director is Marks, its art director is Patil, and its principal artist is Marroquin.
• Its first project, Outlaw Corral, is a Wild West-themed shooter that will be developed in Epic's Unreal Engine for Fortnite. “Developing in UEFN opens a whole new world of opportunities, and we are in uncharted territory. Through experimentation, we will see what the players like and involve them in decisions,” Seropian stated explaining why the company chose the platform over industry standards Unreal Engine 5 and Unity. “We are jumping into it with a ‘the virtual sky is the limit’ mentality. As we develop creative ideas, we will learn how these platforms engage, entertain and boost social interactions to iterate accordingly.”
• Seropian also stated that the platform allows the company to take more risks with development due to its payment model, which pays developers based on the number of players who have hopped into the "island" within Fortnite, as opposed to traditional sales and free-to-play microtransaction models used by other studios.
• Those interested in the project can also join the Look North World Discord server, where the team will continue to update fans on the title's progress, with the first 1,000 members eligible to participate in future testing.

Other recent studio openings:

• Outriders studio People Can Fly has announced it is opening a new office in Montreal, Canada, to work on a new AAA project that is deep into development. The project is being funded and published by Microsoft and is said to be a "highly ambitious, groundbreaking action-adventure title.”
• The Hitman franchise's developer, IO Interactive, has opened a studio in Brighton, England, where it will work on all of the company's ongoing projects. CEO Hakan Abrak stated that IO intends to keep the studio under 150 employees to "avoid having that feeling of a factory" and that it will collaborate with the company's other four studios.