Playdemic founders Paul Gouge and Alex Rigby say their new free-to-play game studio ForthStar won鈥檛 be rushed into launching its much-anticipated first product.
The life-long friends have a track record of success, most noticeably with the BAFTA-winning Playdemic, which produced the hit game Golf Clash. The studio was subsequently sold to Electronic Arts for a record-breaking $1.4bn.
Earlier this year the pair launched their latest venture ForthStar in Altrincham after securing $10m (拢8m) in funding from Griffin Gaming Partners.
Since founding their first mobile studio BattleMail in 2001, Rigby and Gouge have forged an enviable track record for success.
Their debut enterprise sold to (M)Forma in 2002 and was soon followed by the creation and sale of Rockpool Games to Eidos/Square Enix in 2007.
Most recently, their third studio Playdemic was sold to Electronic Arts 鈥� after several years inside Warner Bros 鈥� for an industry breaking cash price of $1.4bn.
They鈥檙e currently busy working on the development of a much-anticipated first product but don鈥檛 expect it to be released until 2025 at the earliest and insist it won鈥檛 be launched on sentiment.
Rigby explained: 鈥淲e wrote down all the things we鈥檝e done well in building these companies or the mistakes that we鈥檝e made and effectively created a manifesto of how we make a new company.
Playdemic founders secure $10m backing for new studio ForthStar
鈥淲e鈥檝e become more harsh about our decision-making. We learnt the lessons of slavishly working on products and bringing them to the market when probably we should have killed them at an earlier stage.
鈥淪ince we started ForthStar we鈥檝e already killed ideas. We鈥檝e started working on a prototype, we鈥檝e talked about it and agreed the best thing to take is to celebrate the lessons we鈥檝e learnt.鈥�
For Gouge the goal is clear. 鈥淲hat we are trying to do at ForthStar is to make products that will resonate with the mass market,鈥� he said. 鈥淭o make games that millions of people love to play every day for years to come.鈥�
In addition to Golf Clash, the pair have had two other major free-to-play hits: Village Life and Gourmet Ranch.
Gouge said: 鈥淭he metrics that make me really excited are the number of players and the game play-time, and both Village Life and Gourmet Ranch had more than 1 million players a day. Village Life had more than 60 million installs.鈥�
The duo left Playdemic in February 2021, soon after the sale to EA, but began planning their return a year later.
鈥淲e secretly knew we鈥檇 be going again,鈥� said Gouge. 鈥淏ecause of our relationship, we spoke pretty much every day. Relatively quickly we realised that the one thing we love to do is build our own games companies.鈥�