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A pair of veterans from the recently closed Kabam Austin studio have formed their own outfit in the city and launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund their first game.
Stormlord Games is founded by former Eve Online executive producer Mike Wallis (president) and Chris Bernert (COO) – whose experience includes titles like ESPNU College Town, Lord of the Rings Online, and Dungeons and Dragons Online.
The two both worked on Imperium: Galactic War while at Kabam Austin, where Wallis served as general manager.
“We want to leverage the accumulated institutional knowledge of the former Kabam Austin team and focus it towards making a next-gen mobile product,” said Wallis.
“With Kabam, we were able to create an MMO quality backend, combine it with cutting-edge game design, and launch it on the web within eight months. We strive to do even better with Empires of Tahn.”
The studio’s first title, Empires of Tahn, is billed as a fantasy massively multiplayer real time strategy game for smartphones and tablets and has already raised $18,500 of its $95,000 funding goal on Kickstarter.
It’s unknown what other staff the studio has on board at the moment to support such an ambitious title, but it’s unlikely that a duo with so much experience with MMOs would go it alone – especially with an advertised release date of Q3 2014.
For Bernert, much of the appeal of the game comes from the rare pairing of a serious MMO and mobile devices.
“Play it on whatever device you enjoy. There isn’t an advantage to any one of them other than portability and access,” he said.
“Empires of Tahn is a persistent game so players will want to have quick access to their accounts whenever anything exciting is happening. By making the game truly cross platform, we can offer players multiple ways to play the game when and where they want. Our preliminary tests have proven to be quite exciting, we are confident on where we are going with this game.”
