While the economy is down and publishers are shedding personnel left and right, that doesn't mean that certain companies don't see opportunities to expand. Take Kuju Entertainment for instance, which GI.biz reports is forming a new studio in the Czech Republic called Vatra.
Vatra is working on two projects for PS3, PC and Xbox 360, one of which is scheduled for a 2011 release. Matthew Seymour (Top Spin, Amped 3) will lead the studio's 45 employees.
"It's top-heavy in regards to industry veterans, a large majority of the people used to work at Illusion Softworks and spent time with 2K Czech where they had such credits as Hidden and Dangerous 2, Mafia, and they put a lot of blood, sweat and tears into Mafia II," said Seymour. "From that part of the world we have some of the most experienced guys around and we can help balance that out by bringing in some new, fresh talent from those areas."
"This is our hardcore, high-end action studio," added Ian Baverstock, CEO of Kuju. "They're a very high quality studio. They're there on their own merits because they're such a high quality team. Pretty much European staff can move around in the EU now so the comparison wage rates are close to the ones in the U.K. anyway. Kuju has always tried to follow talent and set up studios where the talent is and this is definitely a center of gaming talent."
Baverstock noted that this new studio is aiming for higher quality hardcore titles, the sort that need a "home run" in sales to turn a profit. "What we're seeing is there are still deals to be done and still games to be made on the high-end platforms and big budgets for very high quality products. There aren't as many of them as there were but this team is very talented and hopefully its work will speak for itself. They'll be one of those relatively low number of developers who can command decent budgets and timescales in which to go away and make something of really high quality," he noted. "The original gaming space has not gone away at all. As development budgets go up it becomes more of a challenge with each generation to make each title a success and that that's why we're seeing a steady decline in the number of titles and new IPs every year from publishers and developers, but there's no doubt the fanbase is still there."
