These days, the world ‘cloud’ conjures up a certain image: of servers humming away in basements, of high-powered tech evangelists building castles in the sky. Indeed, back in 2013 when Stefán Gunnarsson founded and named Solid Clouds, he found it hard to get out from under that assumption. “During that time, anything that was cloud-based was supposed to be the magic solution or whatever,” he laughs. But he hadn’t named his new studio in reference to remote mass-computing power. Rather, he’d named it for the personal journey he was about to undertake. “I was brainstorming, and I imagined just when you’re daydreaming and looking at the sky, and you see something, and it kind of becomes solid and real.”
In a previous life, Gunnarsson was a mechanic by trade – but he also had a passion for videogames, playing Ultima Online professionally for several years. He ran a play-by-mail game, in which he had 16 people fighting a Napoleonic war, and was drawn to browser-based MMO strategy games such as Tribal Wars and Travian. “From 2007 to 2010, they were a big thing,” he says. “I thought they were fascinating. But what irked me so much was the game map kind of disappeared – it wasn’t that important. Even in modern mobile games, it’s still not that important. Most people who love strategy games have played Civilization, so I wanted to combine the MMO element with a proper game map.”
Denne historien er fra April 2020-utgaven av Edge.
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Denne historien er fra April 2020-utgaven av Edge.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
NO MORE ROOM IN HELL 2
You're not alone in the dark
WINDBLOWN
Life after Dead Cells
COLLECTED WORKS - JOSH SAWYER
Journeying to the Forgotten Realms, Infinity and beyond with the RPG veteran
SCREENBOUND
Going deep in a mind-bending hybrid of perspectives
Trigger Happy
Shoot first, ask questions later
Grand strategist
Paradox's Mattias Lilja addresses the publisher's recent difficulties - and the plan to right the ship
Diablo IV
A progress report on the games we just can't quit
Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection
In Capcom's diabolical tribute, evil goes far deeper than the demons on the screen
SERENITY FORGE
How a near-death experience lit a fire in the Colorado-based developer and publisher
THE MAKING OF...ALIEN: ISOLATION
How a strategy-led studio built a survival horror masterpiece in Ridley Scott's image