This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
A Salt Lake City video-game maker and the director of the new "Star Wars" movie are teaming up to develop a new spy-themed game.
Director J.J. Abrams and Donald Mustard, co-founder of the game developer Chair Entertainment, announced Wednesday that they have been collaborating on a new game, called "Spyjinx."
In a video posted on the game's website, Abrams and Mustard didn't divulge too many details. They did say that, as the title implies, it's set in the world of espionage — a world that Abrams, as creator of the TV series "Alias" and director of the third "Mission: Impossible" movie, knows pretty well.
Mustard described it as "an action strategy game mixed with dynamic world building with role-playing game character development."
Abrams said he and his company, Bad Robot Interactive, wanted to team with Salt Lake City's Chair Entertainment — a subsidiary of North Carolina-based Epic Games, and known for its popular "Shadow Complex" and "Infinity Blade" games — to create a game from the ground up.
"This didn't begin with an IP being forced into a game, or as a game someone wanted to make into a TV show," Abrams said. "This was about what would be really cool to work on together that would take the strengths of what Bad Robot and Chair Entertainment have done and make something better."
"Spyjinx" will start beta testing in early 2016, and the user feedback will be a crucial part of its development. "Players have tools we give to them, and then we can shape the world and future story around how people are playing the games," Mustard said in the video.