It looks like Chad Robertson, head of Anthem’s live service, is no longer working with BioWare. Also, it looks like James Ohlen is helping Robertson seeing that the two are heading up the newly founded company Archetype Entertainment. As of right now, the autonomous division of Wizards of the Coast is working on an unannounced new sci-fi RPG.
The last time we’ve seen ex-BioWare devs in action was back in mid-2019. If you don’t know how that went down, it ended with QC Games — formed by many ex-BioWare devs — going woke and then going broke alongside its game Breach:
And here are the jobless ex-BioWare devs over the now-defunct game Breach:
Another failed case that sees ex-BioWare devs starting their own company is Knightmayor. After failing to bring a third-person action-adventure RPG to PC and home consoles that would not feature “bikini-armor,” the game reappeared as a top-down turn-based game on Steam Greenlight as The Rise of Mooncrest.
Failing to meet two Kickstarter goals with Mooncrest and The Rise of the Mooncrest, the game has been abandoned as well as the official website — which is now a movie-related website. Here are the remnants left of the latter title:
Fast-forward to now, and we see Ohlen and Robertson heading up the newly founded company Archetype Entertainment. Here’s the description from archetype-entertainment.com for the upcoming sci-fi RPG:
“Archetype Entertainment is a game development studio in Austin, Texas led by industry veterans from BioWare and other AAA studios. Founded in 2019, Archetype is an autonomous division of Wizards of the Coast. We are assembling a world-class team to build a multi-platform roleplaying game set in a new science fiction universe.At Archetype, we believe there will always be a place for story-driven roleplaying games that put the player at the center of an epic personal narrative with impactful choices. We are building games that represent the diversity of our audience. We also believe that game studios should empower top developers and challenge them with ambitious projects that are shaped by a strong, clearly communicated creative vision.”
And here are images to go along with the description:
Right now, Archetype Entertainment is looking for quite a bit of people to fill the studio, which consists of the following jobs:
- Art Director
- Lead Character Artist
- Lead Environment Artist
- Lead VFX Artist
- Lead Gameplay Engineer
- Senior Gameplay Designer
- Senior Level Designer
- Gameplay Engineer
- Technical Animator
Seeing that multiple ex-BioWare devs have failed to make headway in the games industry, we’ll see if Archetype Entertainment follows in QC Games and Knightmayor’s footsteps.
In the meantime, you can check out Archetype Entertainment’s official website by paying the given link a visit.
