Longtime game industry and development veterans from the likes of Ubisoft, BioWare, EA and Activision-Blizzard are teaming up to form a new studio in Quebec City. The studio, dubbed Yellow Brick Games, is currently being headed up by Mike Laidlaw, Thomas Giroux, Jeff Skalski and Frederich St. Laurent and has started development on their first project.

Mike Laidlaw, the newly dubbed Chief Creative Officer, expressed his optimism about the growing interest and prominence of indie games and the indie games space and cited the freedom and creative flexibility that come with indie game development as a motivating factor for the studio. Drawing from talent from some of Canada's biggest studios, Yellow Brick Games currently boasts a small team of only 15 developers.

rIn an interview with GameInformer's Liana Ruppert, Giroux, the studio's Chief Executive Producer, said that an important part of Yellow Brick's approach to game development is that the team wants to pursue a "back-to-basics" approach that values creating a new world and experience in a way, "That an independent studio can provide."

Executive Producer, Jeff Skalski, also expressed how excited he was about the studio's potential. Because its talent draws from a wide array of experienced developers who've "Worked on world-class, multi-year projects with thousands of colleagues," Skalski says that Yellow Brick will be able to create new worlds and experiences in a new, refreshing way without losing the immersive feeling that a bigger budget allows.

The studio's talent pulls from a relatively diverse history, with franchises like Assassin's Creed and Dragon Age and more under its belt, so it'll be interesting to see what Yellow Brick Games pulls from and how its veteran employees, who've led some of the most influential and beloved franchises of the past 15 years will look to continue to innovate and push the medium in new and exciting directions.