From BioWare to Ubisoft, the Developers Behind Eternal Strands Have Some Serious AAA Chops First

ign.com:

Continuing our ongoing coverage of Yellow Brick Games’ debut action game, Eternal Strands, we sat down with some of the indie studios’ leadership team to discuss the origins of their scrappy studio, and learn more about the indie world they’re using their AAA backgrounds to create. First, we chatted with CEO Thomas Giroux and COO Jeff Skalski about the studio's origins, then we spoke to Chief Creative Officer Mike Laidlaw and Lead Writer Kate MacMullin about their journey to the indie scene, and the characters and story in Eternal Strands.

IGN: Can you guys talk about where you and the founders of the company came from and what made you guys want to open the studio?

Giroux: The studio was actually founded in 2020 [...] just before the pandemic actually hit. All of us were actually from AAA Studios. We had a chance to work on some amazing franchises in the past, but we had a chance to meet and talk about what we wanted to build for a new company.

The idea behind Yellow Brick Games was to have a studio that would actually be small by choice. We wanted to scope a project that would fit with a smaller team, but with big ambitions. Early in the process, we started making some pillars not for only the game, but actually for the company. Those pillars would actually translate well to the games. The first one was emergent gameplay. That allows us as a small team to actually build interesting systems, so the player can actually interact with those systems and will have more play time.

Skalski: Another pillar that we had was making sure we built a world that was worth watching, and tied to that pillar was also wonder and intrigue. We really wanted to build, identify, and discover beautiful colors in dark places. We felt there was an opportunity to build worlds where players actually wanted to escape to, not to escape from.

IGN: How did you decide on Eternal Strands as the studio’s first game? Was this an idea you guys had even before you had a company?

Skalski: I would say, for