Playdemic founders Paul Gouge and Alex Rigby have unveiled details of their new next mobile free-to-play game studio ForthStar.
While the reveal of their first game is more than a year away, Manchester-based ForthStar has already secured $10m (£8m) in funding from Griffin Gaming Partners.
Gouge and Rigby 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.
The duo have already been joined by many of the key figures from Playdemic, who helped Golf Clash reach more than 150 million installs.
Now, ForthStar is actively recruiting creative and technical talent as they look to further build out their team.
Gouge said: “Our mission is clear; to make great games that millions of people love to play, every day for years.
“It’s an objective we have achieved before, and one that we know we can meet again by building exceptional games that captivate millions of players and become essential daily entertainment.”
ForthStar co-founder and creative director, Alex Rigby, said creating the right culture was critical in the highly competitive but deeply profitable mobile space.
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“We have been fortunate enough to lead and build studios populated by some of the most accomplished and creative talent in our industry,” said Rigby.
“With the opening of ForthStar we are able to leverage all we’ve learnt in more than two decades of mobile gaming, establishing the strongest foundation for future innovation and success.”
Since founding their first mobile studio BattleMail in 2001, Rigby and Gouge have forged a formidable track record for studio 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, the sale of their third studio Playdemic to Electronic Arts – after several years inside Warner Bros – set new records for a UK studio, achieving an industry breaking cash price of $1.4bn.
ForthStar is trialling a four-day working week as part of its hybrid and flexible approach to working, while it says an anti-crunch ethos that focuses on output rather than input demonstrates the leadership’s commitment to forward thinking business practices.
With the doors at ForthStar now open, the studio are actively seeking to recruit talented individuals capable of achieving excellence as part of their highly collaborative and skilled team. More details of open positions can be found here: https://www.forthstar.com/#jobs
Prospective candidates can also reach out to [email protected] directly to register their interest in open roles at ForthStar.
Griffin Gaming Partners is one of the world’s largest venture capital firms focused on the global gaming market with over $1bn in assets under management.
The firm was founded by Peter Levin, Phil Sanderson, and Nick Tuosto, with LionTree as a strategic partner to the fund. Griffin invests in seed through growth stages across software infrastructure, content, and platforms in gaming.