“The innovation is all on mobile,” claims Bungie co-founder Alex Seropian. Of course, the creator of the Halo franchise would say that, as his new studio, Industrial Toys, is focused on mobile platforms. The new company is attempting to bring a hardcore gaming experience to your phone and/or tablet with the help of Unreal Engine 3 and new thinking on the control interface for these devices. Yet for all the innovation, their first effort will be a sci-fi themed FPS… just like Seropian’s biggest hit.
The unnamed project, which is being written by sci-fi author John Scalzi, is gearing up to offer gamers a world on their phone that is as expansive as World of Warcraft, and are focusing on two things that Seropian feels is missing from current mobile games: unique controls and fully integrated community.
“The whole design paradigm about designing for dual sticks is all about creating a software interface for hardware that makes it feel like you have more control and have better skill curves, That’s all about getting closer to how a mouse works. There’s no sense to emulate a relative control scheme, like a controller… We have been designing a control scheme that’s all about putting our controls in the game space, as opposed to the screen space.”
As well as these thoughts on the interface, the company is trying to envelop its social features and functionality into the very mechanics of the game, rather than the default option utilised by most mobile games of creating a separate community space on a linked website.
Industrial Toys plans to officially announce their first game soon, possibly even as early as later this month.
[Source: Joystiq]
