A group of developers laid off from id Software have formed new studio Hidden Horses
The studio is Kickstarting its first game, an FPS called Danger Pay
A team of developers who were recently laid off from id Software have formed a new studio, and plan to make a new FPS.
Hidden Horses is an employee-owned studio consisting of more than 20 former id Software staff, and aims to “pursue fun and creativity in our games, unencumbered by short-term thinking or chasing market trends”.
“As a group of developers who’ve dedicated their careers to making games, we believe this structure allows us to create the kind of company that values long-term health over short-term growth, longevity over quarterly returns, and innovative gameplay over shady monetization,” a statement from the studio reads.
The studio has launched a short documentary video explaining how they were all laid off from id Software, how the layoffs affected them, and how they got together to form Hidden Horses.
“Okay, you’ve got all these people that do this amazing thing at a high level, that really cannot be replicated, and they’re all out of a job now,” producer Andrew Willis said in the video.
“You have all these people on the consumer side that love the games, want more of it, and want more of it than has even been produced in the past.
“So, if the money’s out there to buy the stuff that we make, and the people who make that stuff are now free to make more of it, I just thought we should, we could do this. The demand is there, the supply side is there. There’s no reason that we can’t put a company together to continue this on.
“Especially as I saw the [Doom: The Dark Ages] Revelations DLC critical reviews and player reviews roll in, of just loving it, a lot of them saying it’s the best entry in the whole Doom trilogy from 2016 on, I just became more and more convinced if we put together a company full of these veterans that hold all this immense institutional knowledge, I think the fans would want to buy what they would have to make.”
The new studio has turned to Kickstarter in an attempt to get funding for its first game, a first-person shooter called Danger Pay set in a deadly gameshow, with inspiration taken from The Running Man and Smash TV.
“Unlike a lot of potential startups, having a team that has already worked together for a decade, you already have those connections,” technical artist Todd Boyce said in the video.
“You already all know what each other’s capabilities are. and you already know how to make a game together. To put together a team like the team that this tragedy has kind of spurned, is almost a one in a million opportunity that just doesn’t happen.
“Having the ability to inject your own creativity into a project gives you so much more ownership. And this is an opportunity for an entire team to do that on a new project of their own creation. And that is the most exciting thing I could possibly imagine.”
