Funcom details new casual subsidiary

"SweetRobot will be focusing on publishing games outside the traditional high-end MMO-segment which Funcom has been focusing on the last years," said Funcom CEO Trond Arne Aas. "This will allow us to explore new market opportunities that differ from what we have been doing before while still retaining Funcom's familiar profile. This definitely marks a new and exciting direction for us."

A team of fifteen has been working on Pets vs. Monsters for two years at Funcom, simultaneously building a new game engine designed to offer a flexible development platform for numerous different projects. SweetRobot has described the soon-to-be-released game as a chance to experiment with different concepts, gameplay mechanisms and business models.

"Our passion and dedication for high-end online games remains the same, and Age of Cona' and The Secret World are still our primary focus", added Aas. "But we are also eager to explore new opportunities within the industry, and it felt natural for us to step into the social gaming segment especially considering our outstanding experience with making online worlds and communities. Pets vs. Monsters is very much an exciting project for us, our first attempt at creating an online game for a younger target audience with gameplay mechanics and production values that differ from what we have done before. The fact that these productions require significantly lower budgets and smaller teams to develop is very attractive to us, as it allows us to try out several concepts instead of placing all our resources into one single bet."

Pets vs. Monsters is aimed at children aged between eight and twelve years of age, and is intended to offer a quick download and easy access with as low as possible a barrier to entry.