Linus and Viktor Blomberg, who were founding partners of the critically acclaimed AAA studio Avalanche Studios, have announced the establishment of Elemental Games. This is an independent video game development studio that is opening a new facility in Los Angeles, California.
With a combined industry expertise of more than a century, they’ve been privileged to be founding partners of Avalanche Studios and to have held prominent positions at Ubisoft, Epic Games, and DICE, among other companies.
“Our years in the AAA games industry have been rewarding and given us much experience, but
it has also been frustrating at times. Large companies are often constrained in their ability to
break the mold, due to investors’ focus on short-term financial goals. In that environment it’s
challenging to do explorative development and to be innovative, as well as to advance the
medium in areas such as gender stereotypes and romanticisation of violence.” — Blomberg
Among the many blockbuster games, engines, and films that they have worked on include the Just Cause, Battlefield, and Star Wars Battlefront series as well as Mad Max, Fortnite, and a slew of other popular franchises.
“Our ambition is to bring together the best of both AAA and Indie development, by having a team
with extensive blockbuster experience, but driven by their personal passion for the craft, and
with complete creative and financial independence.” — Blomberg
The team has wanted to build what they would love to play themselves, like open-world games that go above and beyond typical genre definitions and are unified by engaging, systematic gameplay with deep immersion.
“The team consists of developers who can push the boundaries in their fields, and we will take advantage of that to develop proprietary open-word technology. But we also don’t want to reinvent the wheel or spread ourselves too thin, so we work with external partners in areas that we don’t think we can add value to. More on this will be announced during GDC next week.”, Blomberg concludes.