Chet Faliszek and Dr. Kimberly Voll have created the new game studio Stray Bombay to focus on making Co-Op games.

Announced in an official blog post, the two detailed their reasoning for creating the new Seattle-based studio, and what they hope to achieve. Faliszek is known for writing popular Valve games including Portal 1 & 2, Left 4 Dead 1 & 2 and more, while Voll previously worked with League of Legends studio Riot Games as a principal technical designer.

Faliszek said that after the release of Left 4 Dead, he received a letter from a soldier stationed in Iraq who said Left 4 Dead saved his marriage by letting him and his wife forget they were apart and “just exist in the moment.” Voll, described by Faliszek as an “expert in AI and human-centric design,” left Riot a few weeks ago with support from her former coworkers.

Together, the two “want to create games that give players a place to breathe and live in the moment. Games that tell stories knowing you are going to come back again and again, that change each time you play them without feeling completely random, and that help you feel like a real team that supports each other…not a bunch of folks in each other’s way. And where AI drives not just the enemies but helps drive the entire experience.”

 

Both will be present at GDC 2019, which runs from March 18-22 in San Francisco, and will meet with industry professionals interested in joining Stray Bombay. Positions that are currently open include senior engineer, senior gameplay engineer, senior artist, senior level designer and senior animator.

For more on Riot Games, read about last year’s accusations of gender-based discrimination at the studio, and Riot’s comments on the matter.

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Colin Stevens is a news writer for IGN. Follow him on Twitter.