Game developer Hjalmar Vikstrom, a video game industry veteran who worked at Grin and Avalanche Studios before co-founding GTFO developer 10 Chambers, has left his job and plans to work on smaller-scale projects going forward.
“Making games is hard. And these past years have taken their toll,” he wrote on LinkedIn.
Vikstrom said he plans to go independent and make “way smaller games” as he focuses on his health and family “and just enjoying game development.”
Vikstrom did not elaborate as to what he might do next, beyond his comments about the indie space. However, he teased, “More on that later.”
10 Chambers was founded in 2015, with Vikstrom being one of the founders. The studio released its first game, the co-op horror FPS GTFO, in 2019. The developer started with a team of 10 working remotely before setting up a physical development office at Drottninggatan 95 in Stockholm, the former home of Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology. The studio now employs more than 100 people. 10 Chambers’s second game is the heist game Den of Wolves, which is in the works now and set for release on PC.
Vikstrom is leaving the business of making big games at a time of significant upheaval. The current $70 AAA model is not sustainable, some have said. With the success of games like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, some have said the kind of “AA” games–titles with potentially smaller scopes and budgets, and lower sticker prices–could be a viable path forward for gaming. Split Fiction director Josef Fares hopes AA games don’t take over the industry, and reminded people that for every success like Expedition 33, there are numerous more games of that ilk that did not succeed.
People should not allow themselves to be convinced that “AA is a new thing” or “indie is a new thing,” he said.
“We need the diversity. I hope that publishers don’t just look at a game like Expedition, which has been super successful, and think, ‘Oh, AA is a new thing. Let’s only do that.’ I don’t believe in that,” he said.
