Just Cause, Rage developers form new studio to “to evolve the open-world genre”

Staff departures from video game studios are nothing new — just today we learned that nearly half of Perfect Dark’s core development team has left over the past year. Now, 10 developers, several of which hail from Just Cause and Rage 2 developer Avalanche Studios Group, have formed a new studio called Elemental Games.

Among Elemental’s 10 co-founders is Linus Blomberg, who also co-founded Avalanche itself. “We will continue to evolve systemic gameplay and the open-world genre using all the knowledge we gained from Avalanche games,” Blomberg pledged in the studio’s announcement (via Gametsu). “Our ambition is to bring together the best of both triple-A and indie development.” Elemental Games is not alone in wanting to merge these worlds, but it’s a noble goal regardless.

Blomberg’s disdain for certain triple-A practices is what drives that mission. “Large companies are often constrained in their ability to break the mold, due to investors’ focus on short-term financial goals,” the co-founder explained. To solve this problem, Elemental Games is “creating an environment in a truly collaborative way so that opportunities open up that [it] wouldn’t even have considered in isolation.” Blomberg promises more details on this at the upcoming developers’ conference GDC 2022.

For its part, Avalanche Studios Group has a few projects baking right now. MotorStorm veteran Paul Rustchynsky joined the group at the start of the year, though we know that the Liverpool studio the racing vet oversees is not developing another racing game.