Magnus Högdahl

Biography

The company was founded by Swedish programmer Magnus Högdahl. Högdahl was a former member of the PC demoscene group Triton, and specialized in making tech demos. He decided to leave the company after his project, an action role-playing game named Into the Shadows, was cancelled. He then decided to found his own studio and began crafting his own game engine. He actively recruited staff among his acquaintances and the studio was officially established in 1998 in Härnösand, Sweden. Högdahl serving as the company's head and tech lead, was responsible for creating a new game engine for future games, and looking for publishers willing to help publish its games.At that time, the company had only about five employees,and had created a prototype for a video game and pitched it to publishers at E3 1998.Gremlin Interactive agreed to publish the game, and the deal was finalized in late 1998. The company grew to have roughly eleven staff members. The game was a first-person action role-playing game named Sorcery. With a high fantasy setting, the game featured 3D visuals and its gameplay was similar to that of Diablo and Quake.However, Gremlin Interactive was acquired by Infogrames in 2000 and the partnership with Starbreeze dissolved, resulting in the game's cancellation. Games was founded by Lars Johansson, who also worked at a demoscene company. Its first game was The Outforce, a real-time strategy space game that was released in 2000 and subsequently became a success for the company. O3 needed to expand so that it could continue video game development. After Sorcery's cancellation, Starbreeze ran into financial difficulties. Unable to support itself financially, Starbreeze needed to merge with another developer to continue in business.The two companies discussed a merger in Uppsala and merged shortly afterwards, retaining the name Starbreeze Studios.

Research Interest

 Programming