Akella helping with Pirates of the Burning Sea

Flying Lab Software has announced today that it has contracted Akella Corporation to create 3D models of vintage sailing ships for Flying Lab's upcoming massively multiplayer role-playing game, Pirates of the Burning Sea. The partnership will allow Flying Lab to concentrate on the core elements of the game, and it fits in with the company's earlier announcement on user-created artwork to be included in the game.

"Because we're a small studio, outsourcing this core artwork means we can stay focused on gameplay and software engineering. It's a great way to leverage our specialties and theirs," said Russell Williams, executive producer at Flying Lab Software. Akella's experience developing games with similar themes, such as Sea Dogs and Age of Sail, factored greatly into the partnership. "We've been creating adventures at sea for years now, and we've built up the staff and expertise to do great work with this material," said Igor A. Goussarov, producer at Akella Corporation.

Pirates of the Burning Sea is a massively multiplayer role-playing game set in the 18th century Caribbean Sea. Players will assume the role of ship captains trying to work their way up as privateers, merchants, traders, or naval officers. The game will take advantage of special DirectX 9 graphical features and will also use Valve's Steam technology to stream content updates out to users.

For more details, check out our previous coverage of the game.