STOCKHOLM — Offering a fresh approach to the growing opportunities in virtual reality, Fast Travel Games has launched as a VR games studio focused on exploring the full potential of next generation VR storytelling. The founding team is comprised of games industry heavyweights from Rovio, EA and DICE who are responsible for some of the world’s most popular games from Angry Birds 2 and Mirror’s Edge Catalyst to the Battlefield series.
“We feel that VR offers limitless possibilities, and that its inherent qualities make it perfectly suited for storytelling and socially rich experiences,” said Oskar Burman, Fast Travel Games’ CEO and co-founder / ex-head of studio of Rovio Stockholm. “We’re looking to define a new genre of games for VR. Our games will focus strongly on narratively rich worlds full of possibilities for exploration and social gameplay, where players can cooperate, share worlds and experiences, and play together.”
Burman founded and grew Rovio Stockholm to a team of 40 plus developers who created Angry Birds 2, one of the most successful games from Rovio to date. He also played key roles in several other top studios including EA, Easy Studios, Avalanche Studios and others. Oskar is also a co-founder of the Swedish games accelerator, Stugan.
He is joined by two other co-founders, Kristoffer Benjaminsson (CTO) and Erik Odeldahl (Creative Director). Benjaminsson spent the last five years in senior technical leadership roles leading up to becoming the senior development director at Frostbite Labs, the team inside EA exploring new opportunities to create breakthrough experiences like VR. Prior to this, he was the CTO of Easy Studios and lead programmer at EA’s DICE and spent nearly a decade as a systems architect and consultant in the web and telecom spaces. Odeldahl was the design director leading the charge behind Mirror’s Edge Catalyst for EA DICE, where he spent over a decade working on most of the studio’s major titles as a designer or lead programmer. Prior to that he was a programmer across several studios working on games and other applications.
Fast Travel Games’ advisors include Mojang’s production director, Daniel Kaplan; Avalanche Studio’s founder and CCO, Christofer Sundberg; Paradox Interactive’s COO, Susana Meza Graham; and Peter Zetterberg, director on the Microsoft Minecraft team.
The company also announced that it has closed its initial seed funding round from leading Nordic investors including Sunstone Capital, recognized as one of the most active Nordic games industry investors; Mattias Miksche, a private investor with portfolio companies like Tink, Natural Cycles, Teamtailor and Fishbrain; and Mathias Ackermand, a private investor with portfolio companies like Next Games, Fishbrain, Freespee and Poppermost.
“The team’s rich history of creating hit games across mobile, AAA, multiplayer and beyond, will allow them to bring a unique blend of skills that bode well for delivering quality IP for VR. They’ll also benefit from serving as magnets for the very best talent, creating what will no doubt be one of the top VR-focused games companies,” addedNikolaj Nyholm, partner at Sunstone Capital.
Fast Travel Games will be revealing further details about the company and its games in the coming months.
About Fast Travel Games:
Fast Travel Games is a VR games studio focused on exploring VR gameplay experiences rich in social and storytelling components. The Stockholm, Sweden-based company was founded in 2016 by industry leading veterans with a proven history of creating the world’s most immensely popular games the likes of Angry Birds 2, Mirror’s Edge and the Battlefield series as leaders at global games studios Rovio, EA, DICE and elsewhere.
For more information go to http://www.fasttravelgames.com/ and follow them on Twitter.
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