GameFly cofounder launches Red Rocket

With studios closures and publisher layoffs rapidly mounting in the game industry, it's an unusual time to make a splash with a new startup. Be that as it may, a cofounder of mail-order rental service GameFly and a former art director for Electronic Arts are "officially launching" their own new studio, Red Rocket Games.

Although Red Rocket has just been announced to the world today, the company has been quietly ramping up since 2005. Speaking with GameSpot, Red Rocket cofounder Jung Suh (formerly of GameFly) said that he and partner Scott Yu founded the studio to merge the growing trends of casual gaming in the West with online and microtransaction-driven gaming in China. To facilitate that merger, Red Rocket has a management team with experience in Western development heading up a Shanghai-based development studio. (The studio also has a business office in Bellevue, Washington.)

"Initially we're going to be focusing on the US market," Suh said. "The core team here is very familiar with Western games, but we're planning in 2009 to begin production on a China-focused game as well."

Though Red Rocket bills itself as a casual-game developer, it isn't looking to churn out Bejeweled knockoffs.

"If you have a career, family, any other social aspect of your life, it's tough to get 20 or 30 hours a week in there," Suh said. "But there's a point where I don't want to play another "match three" game, another hunt-and-peck, find-the-missing-art-piece [game]. There's a growing audience of people out there who would love to spend 5-10 minutes playing a really fun game that's not necessarily another match-three or time-management type of casual game."

Suh said that he's been inspired by old-school arcade and early console games, and would be looking to create gameplay experiences that merge short play times with pick-up-and-play controls. He pointed to games such as Braid and PixelJunk Monsters as examples of the sort of games Red Rocket is looking to make.

Red Rocket Games plans to make games for the PC, Nintendo DS, Xbox Live Arcade, and iPhone. Its first game is due in early 2009 and will be sold through an online store of the studio's own design, as well as through "other distributors and publishers of casual games."

For more on Red Rocket Games, check out the studio's Web site.