Ex-NCsoft Europe COO founds new studio

Industry veterans Sebastien Vidal and Nicolas Cannasse have formed Shiro Games, a new independent studio focused on developing online PC and tablet games.

The team at Shiro Games is a mix of experienced developers who have worked on acclaimed titles, such as Guild Wars, Rayman and Ghost Recon.

Sebastien Vidal, former COO of NCsoft Europe, brings a wealth of knowledge of the MMO genre and will serve as the company CEO.

Meanwhile, Nicolas Cannasse, founder of Motion Twin and creator of the Haxe programming language, will bring his technical expertise to the company as CTO.

“Creating a new studio is a great opportunity to get the gaming values we believe in into the hands of gamers all over the world: instant and long term fun, depth of gameplay and ease of access,” said Vidal.

The studio, which is located in Bordeaux, France, is currently working on two projects.

The first one is the indie-influenced Evoland HD, based on this summer’s Ludum Dare competition winner Evoland by Nicolas Cannasse. Evoland is an interactive history of video games in the mediem itself. The game has already been played by more than 200,000 gamers. Shiro Games is now creating a polished HD version.

The second game and main project, codenamed Project Z, is a cooperative online action adventure game scheduled for Q4 2013.