DICE Co-Founder Starts Indie Game Studio With 6 Other Pioneers

There seems to be a current trend for gaming pioneers to leave the big studios and start their own new and small indie studios in order to create the things they dream of doing. We recently heard of Alex Hutchinson who left Ubisoft Montreal to form a new indie studio and now DICE co-founder Markus Nyström is doing the same. The new studio is called Fall Damage and it is made up of four DICE veterans in collaboration with Goodbye Kansas Game Invest and the former Swedish Games Industry CEO.

The idea of starting an independent game studio has been brewing for quite some time for the involved people, and it is going to be a place where experienced and new creators can develop both a company and great games together.

“We want everyone at our studio to be involved in the games we create, it’s not until then we get the opportunity to channel all of our passion into our creations. The player experience matters the most to us. Not the hardware, platform or cutting-edge tech,” says Markus Nyström, Creative Director at Fall Damage.

Markus Nyström was one of the co-founders of DICE back in 1992 and as such, he has laid the groundwork for a lot of the games we all love to play today. Together with the other three founders of Fall Damage; Anders Gyllenberg, Mikael Kalms and Dan Vaderlind, they represent a wide and long experience from AAA-productions such as Battlefield and Star Wars: Battlefront, amongst others.

“For many years we have worked on massive productions in enormous teams. We found that we all shared a desire to create something of our own. Fall Damage is our opportunity to build something from the ground up,” says Anders Gyllenberg, CEO at Fall Damage.

Joining them on the journey is Maria Tjärnlund, chairwoman of the board at Fall Damage. Maria is the former Swedish Games Industry CEO and a veteran within the industry. The largest minority owner of Fall Damage is Goodbye Kansas Game Invest, part of the growing VFX & Games group Goodbye Kansas Entertainment, helmed by CEO Peter Levin.

“Goodbye Kansas Game Invest is constantly looking for new partners and Fall Damage is without a doubt one of the most exciting newcomers in the Swedish games industry. We are looking forward to supporting them and together be able to create something that will further strengthen Sweden’s already impressive position as one of the world’s leading game development hubs,” says Peter Levin.

That makes seven people who start Fall Damage, but the plan is to double the number of employees by the end of 2017. Currently, there isn’t a name or details on what they’re working on, but I’m sure they have big ideas. Starting from the ground up, even when you are as skilled as these people, will take some time.