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A group of ex-Black Rock staff, developers of the commercially doomed Split/Second, have formed ShortRound Games, a new development studio based in Brighton, UK.
Reported by GamesIndustry.biz, the studio is currently comprised of game director Andrew Hubbard, technical director Kim Burrows, technical art director Stuart Pharoah, and creative and art director Steve Uphill.
ShortRound is eager to work on portable and handheld hardware, but is not currently ruling out development for any formats.
“We’ve just been made redundant from Black Rock which has given us a great opportunity to achieve what we all came into this industry to do; make games that we want to play and in the way that we want to make them,” said Hubbard.
The team already has two demos in production and plans to showcase them in the next few weeks.
Hubbard considers the team to be in a fortunate position. “We’re all really privileged to have worked on some great games like the Burnout series and Split/Second and have now got the chance to take what we’ve learnt and apply it to our own creations.”
Two other former Black Rock staffers, Nick Baynes and Ian Monaghan, have also recently started their own studio, called Roundcube Entertainment.
Work on a sequel to Split/Second was cancelled in December 2010, and Disney Interactive announced in January it was looking to restructure the organisation.
Arcade racer Split/Second was Black Rock’s last game. “Split/Second is so close to being great; so much so that in short bursts it really is a spectacular arcade racer. It just doesn’t have any legs,” wrote VideoGamer in its 7/10 Split/Second Review.
