A video game startup whose founders have worked on titles such as Fortnite, Apex Legends and Call of Duty has launched in Raleigh – and is hiring ahead of the development of its first title.
Methodical Games, founded by a nine-person team of industry veterans from Cary-based Epic Games, Respawn Entertainment and Infinity Ward, has secured a $15 million round led by Lightspeed Ventures.
The new company is gearing up for something “different,” co-founder Frank Gigliotti said.
Gigliotti has spent 25 years in the video game industry, most recently seven years at Epic Games where he was part of the team developing Battle Royale on Fortnite. When he left in May of 2021, “I wasn’t actually planning on doing anything,” he said.
“I was going to take some time off, see what happens,” he said. “But what I found was a lot of previous colleagues of mine were reaching out saying, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’”
He spent the rest of 2021 “just reaching out to industry friends.” He equates conversations with video game entrepreneurs as crash courses on VC funding, getting a publishing deal.
In January, he and his co-founders – including design director Adam Bellefeuil and technical director Dave Ratti, both formerly of Epic Games – started working on a pitch.
The round closed in July, and the firm is just coming out of stealth mode. But Gigliotti is tight-lipped about the concept his team is proposing.
“The idea, it’s a mixture of different genres,” he said. “What I can say is it’s different from anything we’ve worked on in the past.”
Gigliotti and his team have primarily tackled first-person shooters. The game they are now developing is still multi-player, but is more “action adventure based, a fantastical world.”
“It will be third person,” he said, “more focused on close-quarters combat.”
More important than the details is the experience the game will bring, he said.
“The main idea behind the game is having players be able to go on these mini-adventures with their friends,” he said. “We like to reference that feeling of watching ‘The Goonies’ or ‘Stranger Things.’ You have your group of friends. You go on these journeys. Crazy stuff happens … you have wild stories you talk about for days.”
But it will be sometime before the firm releases a game. He expects about three years of development.
“We’re just starting pre-production,” he said. And that means hiring. Already, the company has open positions, expecting to double in the coming months at its office near PNC Arena. By the time the game is ready, he hopes to have about 50 employees.
