Barely any time has passed since Leslie Benzies announced the first new project of his new game development company, and they're already expanding. Everywhere Game Limited, the company dedicated to the development of the game of the same name, is opening a new studio to join the existing offices in Los Angeles and Edinburgh.
The new studio is located in Budapest, the capital city of Hungary. Zen Studios and formerly Crytek Hungary both have/had their headquarters in the city. Notably, the former head of the latter, Kristoffer Waardahl, will be leading the new studio.
While it's rare for fresh companies to kick things off with multiple studios and expand immediately, keep in mind that Benzies is probably bringing a whole lot of capital to this new endeavor. In his time at Rockstar Games, he's likely amassed quite the fortune, not to mention his name is probably like catnip for investors.
The studio has already posted three job offers to gamesindustry.biz, seeking an Environment Artist, Engine Programmer and Game Programmer, with the latter two posting requiring 5 years of work experience in their respective fields.
To develop and build a beautiful open world game is one of our core passions and it resonates deeply with the team. When we heard Leslieʼs vision for the game, we jumped at the opportunity to join Everywhere and are delighted to be part of the core team bringing the game alive.
Waardahl joins an already impressive lineup of industry veterans, spearheaded by three ex-Rockstar colleagues, including Benzies himself. The company spread out over three studios already has a number of skilled and talented people on board, with a host of other job openings in the Edinburgh (seemingly the main) studio and Los Angeles studio.
The game the team is working on, titled Everywhere, is allegedly pushing the boundaries of what constitutes a 'video game'. Benzies and his fellow ex-Rockstar counterparts did their best to describe the project without giving away too much in an interview with Polygon recently.
Everywhere, while boasting its own storyline, characters and lore, will encourage players to craft their own adventures and tales. Blending game with development platform with pseudo-social-network, Everywhere is intended to be the next great stepping stone for the entire industry.
While Benzies is bringing a whole lot of experience from his years working on the GTA franchise, he's assured gamers that this project will be its own thing, though some points of similarity between the two are to be expected. While we know a lot about what the game aspires to be, concrete details are sparse.
There is no projected release date set for Everywhere, or anything else, really. This should come as no surprise, considering the studio working on the thing has just established itself. The fact that the game has been announced at all is quite unorthodox, seeing as even in the best of cases, another 5-6 years will be required to finish it.
Benzies is often credited with being the brain behind the project that evolved into GTA Online, and with saving the nightmarish development of Red Dead Redemption. We're interested to see where this ambitious project goes in the future.
