Avalanche Studios co-founders establish new studio Elemental Games

Elemental Games, a Stockholm-based studio formed in August 2021 by founding members of Avalanche Studios including co-founders Linus and Viktor Blomberg, has officially announced its establishment.

The studio, which is privately held, has a mission to create “high-quality open-world experiences from a creatively and financially independent position.” Its first title, an original intellectual property, is currently in development.

The founding team comes from “prominent positions” in companies such as Avalanche Studios, DICE, Epic games, and Ubisoft, and have worked on titles such as Battlefield 1, Fortnite, and Unreal Engine, as well as films and series such as Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker, The Mandalorian, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

The studio’s founding members includes:

• Linus Blomberg
• Viktor Blomberg
• Oskar Blomberg
• Kristofer “Loffan” Labedzki
• Robert Krupa
• Martin Kritan’ Bergquist
• Christian Nilsendahl
• Emil ‘Humus’ Persson
• Andreas Tillema
• Tobias Ekholm

Find comments from Elemental Studios co-founder Linus Blomberg below.

“We will continue to evolve systemic gameplay and the open-world genre, using all the knowledge we gained from Just Cause, Mad Max, Rage 2, and other Avalanche games.

“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 romanticization of violence.

“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.

“We’ve seen in the past how technology, art and design are often in conflict rather than elevating each other. So we are creating an environment where none of these disciplines dictates to the others, where we use our experience and craftsmanship in a truly collaborative way so that opportunities open up that we wouldn’t even have considered in isolation.

“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.”