Far Cry 2 and Assassin's Creed Hexe creative director launches a new studio, a few months after surprise exit from Ubisoft

Just a few months after his surprise departure from Ubisoft, where he'd been serving as the creative director on the mysterious Assassin's Creed Hexe, veteran developer Clint Hocking has founded a game studio called Build Machine Games.

Hocking's new outfit is "lean and fast," he wrote on LinkedIn, but also "bold and ambitious."

"We aspire to expand the expressive range and power of the medium with emotionally resonant, socially relevant games that challenge players' perspectives, pre-conceptions and empathy as much as their reasoning and reflexes."

There's a similar aspirational-yet-smacking-of-LinkedIn vibe on the Build Machine Games website, where you'll see a list of "values" that includes things like "Lead From the Front," "Always Attack," and "Challenge to Improve." Of course, there's also a mission statement: "Our mission is to make great games that exceed expectations and elevate the form by empowering passionate developers with autonomy and accountability, and supporting them with inspiring vision, agile practices and cutting edge technol...