KO_OP is a Canadian game studio

cooperative A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-contro ...

based in Montreal. It was founded in 2012.

History

Studio director Saleem Dabbous and programmer Bronson Zgeb founded KO_OP in 2012 to make "visually arresting avant-garde games". The studio is run as a

workers cooperative A worker cooperative is a cooperative owned and self-managed by its workers. This control may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision-making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which management is elected by ...

with equal salary and decision-making between co-owners. Dabbous and Zgeb used personal savings to launch the company and relied on work-for-hire to finance its own games. They struggled with inexperience in their over-scoped early projects, as they moved through a dozen prototypes and eventually cancelled two projects in full production. '' Gnog'' was nominated for Excellence in Visual Art at the 2016

Independent Games Festival The Independent Games Festival (IGF) is an annual festival at the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the largest annual gathering of the independent video game industry. Originally founded in 1998 to promote independent video game developers, ...

and released in 2017. KO_OP also built "The Mirror of Spirits", an expansion for ''

Lara Croft Go ''Lara Croft Go'' is a turn-based puzzle video game in the ''Tomb Raider'' series. The player moves Lara Croft as a puzzle piece through a board game while avoiding obstacles and manipulating the environment. The developers distilled major ser ...

'', in 2016.

List of games

References

External links

* {{DISPLAYTITLE:KO_OP Video game companies of Canada Worker cooperatives of Canada 2012 establishments in Quebec Canadian companies established in 2012 Video game companies established in 2012 Companies based in Montreal Articles with underscores in the title