In fact, you've probably already played a few games that started out as student projects from the school: Journey predecessor Fl0w, The Unfinished Swan and The Misadventures of P.B. Winterbottom (pictured above) all came out of USC's lab. The school also counts Uncharted designer Richard Lemarchand as one of its professors.

One of the key points Wired's piece makes is that USC doesn't want to futz with a creator's vision. Fringe ideas are celebrated rather than scoffed at, and the label exists as an alternative to working with a bigger, profit-minded publisher. The more off-kilter the student projects are, the better. Wired says that even though the initial crop will be homegrown titles, the idea is to essentially give creators full creative control to "be innovative, artistic or just plain weird."

Considering the new publisher's already impressive pedigree, that seems to have worked out pretty well so far.