Former Guerrilla chief forms non-profit games firm

OneBigGame hopes to bring to market games that will raise funds for a wide variety of children’s charities around the world.

"OneBigGame is a global platform that will allow game developers to use their creative resources to do something good for the world," said de Ronde, who co-founded Guerrilla in its previous guise as Lost Boys, and has now dedicated his time to the OneBigGame initiative.

The thinking behind OneBigGame, says de Ronde, is that the videogames industry can take advantage of its place in both the entertainment business and the attentions of youth culture to raise funds for charity and raise awareness of the casuses it supports amongst young gamers.

Already, an advisory board of 16 individuals from the global games industry are taking part to guide and support the endeavour, and a number of game developers have pledged support, including designers such as Charles Cecil (Revolution Software), Eric Zimmerman (Gamelab) and Ernest Adams (International Hobo). Studios such as Avalanche Studios, Relentless, Kuju and Freestyle are also backing the company.

"So far, industry response has been tremendous," added de Ronde. "Over the past months, we have been conducting informal talks with a wide variety of games industry people, and we are confident the development community is ready for a large scale industry wide charity initiative."

Added Arthur Houtman, director of online games at Disney Online, one of the members of the advisory board: "OneBigGame is a wonderful initiative that every developer should seriously consider contributing to."

OneBigGame official goes live at GDC next week, where de Ronde will be looking to extend the company’s relationships with the development community.