Funcom awarded $260,000 grant

Norwegian developer and publisher Funcom, the company behind the Age of Conan and Secret World MMO titles, has been awarded a grant worth NOK 1.5 million (USD 262,000) to help it create a new social MMO based around extreme sports.

The firm is currently only in the early stages of planning, and a fuller announcement will be made in due course, but work should start in earnest at the beginning of 2010.

"Yes, I can confirm that Funcom is working on a new project called Board with the World," Erling Ellingsen, director of communications at Funcom, told GamesIndustry.biz. "This will be a free-to-play social MMO focusing on the world of extreme sports. Right now we are in a very early planning phase for this project, but we expect to start working on an initial prototype in January next year.

"First and foremost we will be focusing on snowboarding, with the possibility of adding different sports later. We also want this to be a social world rich with different types of media content and pop-cultural elements such as music, video and even fashion. It is definitely exciting, and we look forward to revealing more on this later."

The company's share price currently stands at NOK 3.75 (65 cents) on the Oslo Bors stock exchange.