MachineGames

MachineGames Sweden AB is a Swedish video game developer based in Uppsala. The studio was founded in 2009 by seven former employees of Starbreeze Studios, including founder Magnus Högdahl. After unsuccessfully pitching game ideas to several publishers, MachineGames agreed with Bethesda Softworks to develop a new instalment in the Wolfenstein series in July 2010, and was acquired by Bethesda's parent company, ZeniMax Media, in November. In the Wolfenstein series, MachineGames developed The New Order (2014), The Old Blood (2015), The New Colossus (2017), Youngblood (2019), and Cyberpilot (2019). MachineGames' founding team—consisting of Kjell Emanuelsson, Jerk Gustafsson, Magnus Högdahl, Jim Kjellin, Fredrik Ljungdahl, Jens Matthies, and Michael Wynne—was previously employed by Swedish video game company Starbreeze Studios, of which Högdahl was also the founder. By mid-2009, while the team was working on the game Syndicate, Starbreeze had grown to more than 100 employees, and the seven-piece team wanted to start anew. All seven left the studio and set up MachineGames in Uppsala, Sweden. An alternative name considered for the company was "Tungsten". Matthies became the company's creative director, while Gustafsson became managing director and executive producer. Högdahl and Wynne left shortly thereafter for personal reasons. For the first one-and-a-half years, the MachineGames team brainstormed game ideas and pitched them to various publishers, including Bethesda Softworks, being rejected on all of them. Running out of funds, the team considered either selling their homes to finance the studio further or close down the studio entirely. Around this time, developer id Software and the rights to its Wolfenstein series of games were acquired by Bethesda's parent company, ZeniMax Media. Following this acquisition, Bethesda offered MachineGames to work on one of its intellectual properties, and when Matthies learned that no one was developing a Wolfenstein game at the time, he requested that MachineGames could develop one.