Former Battlefield developers launch new game studio, The Outsiders

Former Battlefield developers David Goldfarb and Benjamin Cousins today announced a new game studio, The Outsiders, which is working on a PC role-playing game.

Goldfarb and Cousins both worked in senior creative capacities on various DICE games though have worked for other companies more recently. Cousins has been consulting after a stint as head of mobile outfit DeNA's European crew. Goldfarb was director of PayDay 2 at Overkill before he quit last summer.

"I'm starting a new studio. It's called The Outsiders," stated Goldfarb in a tweet today. "My old friend and colleague @BenjaminCousins is co-founding it with me."

The new company has a website, which offers little information about the company's plans, but includes some basic concept art. However, in an interview with Gamesindustry, Goldfarb outlined some of the studio's guiding principles.

He said he was burned out by big budget game development. "I do think there's a spot between the $200 million dollar AAA games and the $1 million indie games that is not being adequately explored," he explained. "To me that's a really rich field to plow and you can do awesome stuff there.

"There's a lot of mid-tier games getting made right now that are succeeding on Steam, in that $3-$8 million range. If you look at the Paradox stuff, those guys are killing it. Those aren't like super expensive games but they're doing very well. There's room in the market to make those types of games that aren't crazy fidelity, 8,000 person teams but they have a style and quality and they're something you can return to over and over because of the gameplay. To me, I'm happy to do that."

In a separate interview, he told Eurogamer that the company's first game will be an RPG. "I've loved RPGs all my life and have been shoehorning elements of them into games I've made over the years with lesser or more success," he said. "I'm interested in systemic story stuff. I know Ken [Levine] has recently been talking about this. I have another way I want to try and do it. But I think it won't be a game of cut scenes."