Yellow Brick Games has debuted has a new studio led by video game industry veterans Mike Laidlaw (former creative director of the Dragon Age series), Thomas Giroux, Jeff Skalski, and Frédéric St-Laurent B.
It’s another example of the boom in game studios, fueled by historic growth during the pandemic and investments by game venture capital funds, which have invested billions of dollars in more than 100 studios in the past nine months.
The team has opened an independent studio dedicated to making original, high-quality games. The developers have had leading roles in studios at Ubisoft, Electronic Arts, and BioWare. They worked on big franchises like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Watch Dogs, and Assassin’s Creed. The team is working on its first major project in Québec City, Canada, which has become a big hub for gaming.
“We have learned a lot from working on world-class, multi-year projects with thousands of colleagues and we want to take a different approach,” said Skalski, the studio’s executive producer and chief operating officer, in a statement. “Leveraging a smaller talented team where people come first, we will create amazing worlds and experiences for all others to enjoy. The market is moving fast, and we have no desire to play catchup and chase it when we can influence where it goes. These goals drove us to found Yellow Brick Games.”
Yellow Brick Games’ CEO is Giroux, who spend a decade at Ubisoft Montréal and then founded Sunny Side Up Creative, a video games marketing agency, which was later acquired by global video game service provider Keywords Studios, in 2019.
Laidlaw will be chief creative officer. He was one of the creative pillars behind the award-winning series Dragon Age and Jade Empire.
“The market for independently produced games is growing rapidly and the technology is keeping pace,” said Laidlaw, in a statement. “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.”
St-Laurent B. also worked at Ubisoft and Sarbakan, and he will take on the role of game director within the new team.
“The rise of remote work has rewritten the rules and is opening up opportunities to recruit talent from around the world. We have additional employees based in Montreal and other countries, but we couldn’t be more proud and happier to be doing this from the heart of Québec City,” said St-Laurent B., in a statement.
Yellow Brick Games has 15 people working on a new game. The studio didn’t take any questions and did not comment on whether it raised money. The team expects to grow in the coming months and years.
