Nearly a year ago, Electronic Arts shut down its Chicago studio. All 146 of its employees were either folded into other EA Studios or released in what EA president Frank Gibeau called "the toughest decision I've made in my career." Now, almost a full year later, 27 of those former EA Chicago members have come together to establish another game developer called Robomodo.

Robomodo was founded by five partners: Joshua Tsui, David Michicich, Nick Ehrlich, Peter Sauerbrei and Richard Ho. Over the past decade, the Robomodo founders were co-workers at several studios, including EA Chicago up until last year and Midway back in the mid '90s. "At Robomodo we are dedicated to 'doing it right', from the way we approach game design and art, to the methods we use to manage our projects," said Tsui, Robomodo's Director, in a press statement. "Our culture is focused on enabling game designers and artists to innovate, while providing them with proper management oversight and technology support."

Along with officially announcing the opening of the studio, Robomodo already has work to do, having signed an agreement with Activision Blizzard to work on one of their existing intellectual properties. "Activision has embraced our vision and agreed to give us a shot with one of their IPs," said Tsui. "We are fortunate to be working with the largest publisher worldwide, and we are looking forward to collaborating with their team on one of their upcoming games."

Robomodo plans on working with already-existing IP in the short term, but also wants to create original titles at some point in the near future. Finding established franchises to work on shouldn't be a problem for the new studio, whose founders have worked for the likes of Midway Games, EA, THQ, Microsoft, and Atari. Robomodo, which has a total of 45 employees and is looking to expand, plans on developing games for the PC, consoles and handheld platforms.

Join our discussion on this topic