FoxNext Games has opened a new studio in San Francisco called Fogbank Entertainment.

The development branch is headed by former Kabam game design senior director Daniel Erickson as studio head and ex-Kabam senior director of project management Nathan Germick as executive director.

Other team members include former BIoware lead writer Alex Freed, who will oversee narrative development, ex-Kabam art director Ken Capelli and cinematic director Jake Hughes.

Story-driven games

The studio aims to focus on developing narrative-focused games where the “players as tasked with making decisions”.

Its first title will be an episodic narrative game that will harness Fox’s IP as well as original content.

“FoxNext is committed to developing quality gaming experiences and Fogbank is going to help us to develop an interactive storytelling platform that allows us to expand on Fox’s catalog of entertainment while also developing new, unique fiction,” said FoxNext Games president of studios Aaron Loeb.

“Narrative and story-driven games continue to rank among the top grossing and most downloaded games across industry standards, and we’re assembling a team of people dedicating to furthering the form.”

Narrative-driven games is one of the hottest genres on mobile right now following the success of titles like Pocket Gems' Episode and Pixelberry's Choices.

Nexon recently acquired the latter studio Pixelberry, while Ubisoft has also got in on the action with the purchase of Is It Love? developer 1492 Studio.

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