Ex-BioWare devs are building their game's world through a podcast first

North Mist Studios, a Canadian indie founded in 2024 by former BioWare veterans, is doing something genuinely unusual: instead of going dark until a vertical slice is ready, they're building out their game's world in public — through a narrative podcast called The Concierge.

The Concierge is a spy thriller office drama set in the near future, where personal data protection is described as more valuable than money. It's currently in the middle of its second season. North Mist is using the show to flesh out the world their first game will be set in, essentially doing worldbuilding live in front of an audience. "Instead of waiting years to release a finished video game we're sharing the journey of world building with you, the listener, by releasing prequel audio dramas set in the world our games take place in," the studio wrote on Bluesky. The podcast is available on Apple Podcasts.

North Mist was founded after what the studio itself describes as a "fateful encounter at a local ice cream shop" in 2024. The team comes from BioWare, a studio long associated with story-heavy RPGs like Dragon Age and Mass Effect — so leaning hard into narrative craft before a single line of game code ships publicly makes a certain kind of sense. It's a rare move in an industry where studios typically keep everything under wraps until a polished announcement trailer is ready.

There's no release window or even a title for the actual game yet, but the podcast is live and running now if you want to get in on the ground floor of whatever North Mist is building.