Flagship Co-Founder Forms Gravity Bear

Flagship Studios co-founder Phil Shenk launched a development studio titled Gravity Bear, where he will serve as the company's CEO. While Shenk chose not to announce further details on studio or its slated projects, he told consumer website Shacknews that Kevin Klemmick, former senior software engineer for Flagship's MMO Hellgate: London, will join Gravity Bear as technical director. Prior to co-founding Flagship in 2003 with several other Blizzard Entertainment employees, Shenk worked at Blizzard North on several titles, serving as lead character artist on Diablo II and as art director on that game's expansion, Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. Previous to that, he worked at developers such as Maxis South, Wild Tangent, GlassEye Entertainment, and Origin Systems. Gravity Bear is the third new studio founded by vets of the now-defunct Flagship -- co-founder and former COO Max Schaefer announced MMORPG company Runic Games in August, while ex-Flagshippers Dave Brevik and Jeff Lind helped establish Turbine's new West Coast studio in Redwood City, CA. Flagship co-founder and former CEO Bill Roper also recently revealed that he joined Cryptic Studios to work on Champions Online as design director.