Social gaming outfit fiveonenine Games has officially opened its new Durham, North Carolina studio.

A joint venture between US media companies E.W. Scripps and Capitol Broadcasting, its remit is to create social and casual games that contain culturally and politically relevant content for iOS and Facebook.

To that end, its first game, Political Rampage, which will feature caricatures of figure such as Barack Obama and Sarah Palin facing off in a humorous match-three format,

is expected sometime in March.

Political animal

"We will be launching titles that are inherently more engaging than what is currently on the market by building gaming situations that are relevant to today's headlines instead of contrived environments," explained CEO Lloyd Melnick.

Sarah Daniels, vice president of creative, added: "With the extensive resources and built-in coast-to-coast audiences of E.W. Scripps and Capitol Broadcasting behind us, we plan to release a wide variety of engaging games over the coming months."

"We will be starting with iOS and expanding to Facebook and other platforms soon after."

[source: VerticalWire]