Board game specialist Fantasy Flight Games launches development studio

Fantasy Flight Games has announced plans to enter the video games market.

The company has previously produced board games based on IP such as XCOM, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and Arkham Horror. Now it has launched a video game development studio called Fantasy Flight Interactive.

The new unit will be headed up by Tim Gerritsen, the former CEO of Human Head Studios and studio director of Irrational Games.

The interactive arm won’t just look to adapt its existing range into digital, but also create brand new titles geared specifically for the video games market. PC (via Steam) has already been name-dropped, with other platforms said to be following – possibly including smartphones and/or consoles.

“We didn’t create a new company just to translate board games into digital games,” Fantasy Flight Games founder and Asmodee North America CEO Christian Petersen said. “We’re focused on the bigger picture of the experiences our fans can have on new platforms, and this will take our brands in new directions.”

Gerritsen added: “We’re incredibly excited to be bringing Fantasy Flight Games’s best game properties to life as amazing video game experiences. Fantasy Flight Interactive is made up of developers who love both tabletop games and video games and we are striving to create games that capture the best aspects of both media to entertain our fans.”

The company says that its digital games will, like its board games, offer “experiences with easy-to-understand UI that maintain the core philosophies of Fantasy Flight Games—smartly designed, carefully curated play experiences, adapted for digital gaming with the same emphasis on fun, balance and polish”.