Behind the scenes on Valve and Riot vets Chet Faliszek and Kimberly Voll's new co-op centric studio Stray Bombay

pcgamesinsider.biz:

At GDC, Valve alum Chet Faliszek (far right) and Riot vet Dr Kimberly Voll (right) revealed that they had set up a new Seattle-based studio, Stray Bombay. This new venture is focusing on co-op games and is backed by both VC firm Upfront Ventures and League of Legends maker Riot Games.

Ahead of the announcement, PCGamesInsider.biz caught up with the development duo to see why they've set up this new development house, how AI could be used to improve co-operative games and what they have learnt from their times at Riot and Valve

So, why start this studio?

Chet Faliszek: Kim and I have been talking about co-op games in particular for years and so we wanted to really just approach the problem from the ground up. It's not just the moment-to-moment; it's everything and just making sure we carry all the way through on co-op games. So we wanted to start a studio that made co-op games.

Dr Kimberly Voll: That's basically it. We've had a chance to work on a lot of different cool products over the years and learn a lot of things and whatnot. This was just a really cool opportunity to just start from the very beginning, from how we think about the studio itself to the products that we're making and so on.

You mentioned a 'problem' in co-op games, Chet. What do you see the problem as?

Faliszek: I love co-op games; I've worked on some. I always play any co-op game. A lot of the time, co-op is an afterthought or they do a lot of things that actually work against the players so they're not actually working together. We just really wanted to go back and make a game that's co-op focused that is broad and encompassing of the audience for it, that's not super hardcore and you can play with a really mixed skill set.

Both of you have specialised in AI and how it can be used in game design. How do you see this tech impacting the co-op genre?

Voll: It's part of the overall holistic design. It's more like a facilitation role. You can think of the AI as a service that is working to