Fishlabs expands dev team with four new hires

Hamburg-based mobile developer Fishlabs Entertainment has expanded its development team with four new hires.

Former Activision Blizzard and Funcom developer Anthony Beels has joined the company as lead game designer, and will be in charge of development for a brand new title that has yet to be officially announced

Other hires include ex-IO Interactive employee Thorsten Kohnhorst as senior programmer, Katja Alsleben as the development department’s new tools programmer and former Anima Entertainment dev David Leinhauser, who joins the firm’s research and development team.

“We have got grand plans for 2013,” said Fishlabs Entertainment CEO Michael Schade.

“We do not only have a lot of very interesting projects in the pipeline, but we are also very eager to expand our position as a world-leading developer of high-end premium games for iOS and Android onto to free-to-play market. With our first multiplayer title we want to show that it is indeed possible to bring this business model in line with high-quality production value and challenging game design.

“In addition, we also want to upgrade our very own Abyss engine and make it even more powerful. After all, it is an indispensable tool that enables us to develop our games beyond the limits of platform boundaries and without the aid of any middleware. In order to put these plans into practice, it is important that we get new talent on board and enlarge our team a steady but healthy pace.”

As well as developing its first multiplayer title, due to be released on the App Store in Q3 this year, FishLabs said it was also working on improving its Abyss engine while also creating a number of new games and original IP.