Traega Entertainment is coming out today as a new independent game studio started by veteran game developers.
Dax Hock, who formerly worked at games such as Dreamfall: The Longest Journey and Anarchy Online at Funcom, has assembled a team of game developers to work at an independent studio in Nashville, Tennessee.
The team brings decades of experience from Riot, EA, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Disney, Midway, and Funcom. They are currently working on an unannounced project which is a tactical role-playing game centered around card collection. The title is set to launch in 2018.
“Traega was created to build quality games with depth and a lot of freedom,” explains Hock. “I love to be challenged and to have the choice to play the way I want. These values will be at the core of everything we create, even with smaller scale games, like the one we are building now.”
Hock started the studio in 2015. Traega plans to continue to expand the team as well as the scope of its future games.
“I want to foster a culture of collaboration,” said Hock, in a statement. “Despite our individual roles, each of us have a hand in influencing all aspects of the game. My goal is to create something that we all want to play, something that we can all be proud of.”
Traega has 11 employees and is funded by Hock. Hock said he has been passionate about games for 30 years since he got his first Atari console. He taught himself programming and started out as a game tester.
“After college, I worked at Funcom on a number of titles,” he said in an email. “It was a great experience, but I had to put my gaming career on hold for other business ventures. During that time, I still designed and ran a multi-user dungeon (MUD) to stay involved with gaming. I own several businesses in construction and real estate that have been successful, and now I am back to my goal: a career in gaming.”
As for Nashville, he wrote, “Nashville is an amazing city. It’s one of the fastest growing areas in the country and it has an incredible creative energy. I spent several years in Austin and I see a lot of similarities as Nashville continues to grow. With its strong music and arts community, reasonable cost of living, and growing tech scene, I really feel like the area is the perfect area to create video games. It’s also a great place to raise a family. With my wife and 4 kids, the area puts us near family and a lot of great activities for the kids.”
