The former head of World of Warcraft is founding a new game studio. “Bonfire” is being enabled by Riot and aims to “bring players together.”
A Team Full of Legends
Many players might still remember the developer Rob Pardo, as he has shaped the childhood of several generations. He was the lead developer of World of Warcraft at Blizzard for a long time, but also worked on Warcraft 3, Diablo 2, and the StarCraft series. Therefore, one could say that a large part of the players has already experienced his works. However, Rob Pardo left Blizzard after nearly 16 years in 2014 – and now we also know why! He is founding the new game studio “Bonfire”, which wants to focus on online games. Whether it will be about mobile or PC games is still not entirely clear.
So far, the studio is “only” founded and is still looking for new employees, but already it has landed some “big fish”. Rob has already managed to win over Nick Carpenter, who previously led Blizzard’s cinematics team, Min Kim (former CEO of Nexon America), and Josh Mosqueira, the Game Director of Diablo 3 (2011-2016).
In the official announcement from Rob Pardo, it says, almost a bit in a “Blizzard style”:
“Many game developers of my generation have a similar story. We were outsiders who had multi-colored dice in our pockets, hid our action figures in the closet, and waited weekly in front of the comic shop for the latest issue. (…) Our parents blamed us for using video games to escape reality, but these worlds gave us the opportunity to matter. To dream, to fight, to compete, and ultimately to leave our mark on the universe (even if it was just digital). Then we grew up and started creating games ourselves.
Game developers live the dream where passion and work come together. We do not see our weeks as something we have to endure to be able to “live properly” on the weekend. But developers often have to decide – do I work on a new blockbuster game where I have little personal influence or in the brave indie studio that goes largely unnoticed? Our dream is to create a studio where developers do not have to choose.”
Bonfire will place a particularly strong focus on connecting players, which will likely strongly emphasize social interactions and dependencies.
Currently, it is all being financed by Riot, who surely have high hopes for Bonfire’s future project – even if so far it is likely still no more than a rough idea. But with such big names that have already made video game history, very solid foundations are at least laid. It remains exciting to see what the studio will have to show in a few years.
