molten-games
Latest
Lead producer pens requiem for Molten Games
Former Molten Games lead producer Oksana Kubushyna has penned a lengthy requiem for the recently closed studio on her personal blog. Molten was working on a title called Blunderbuss when it unexpectedly lost its funding last month. The post features a series of snapshots and videos detailing what it was like to work at the San Diego studio on a daily basis, and Kubushyna also says that the game itself was pretty far along. "It was a complete vertical slice with an installer, patcher, back-end platform (multiplayer, basic matchmaker, persistence, monitoring, telemetry), back-end administration tools, automated deployments, automated test framework, gameplay systems, UI, and of course content -- multiple champions and a beautiful map," she writes. You can view the Blunderbuss cinematic demo after the cut. [Thanks Paul!]
Molten Games lays off staff, halts work on Blunderbuss
Molten Games, which sent out press releases last year touting everything from its lineup of former SOE and Blizzard devs to its NCsoft funding, has apparently laid off its entire staff. The company was working on some sort of Unreal 4-powered multiplayer title called Blunderbuss, but Gamasutra reports that all that is out the window as of this week. Molten director of technology Joshua Kriegshauser shared some alpha footage of the company's project through his Twitter account, and Gamasutra has collected multiple links from affected staffers around the web. You can click past the cut to view the alpha vid.
Molten Games is building something called Blunderbuss
Remember last summer when Molten Games sent out a press release saying that it had picked up ex-Blizzard and SOE personnel as well as a substantial chunk of funding courtesy of NCsoft? Well, the company has revealed the name of its project, though not much beyond that. The concoction is called Blunderbuss, and according to 2P it is an Unreal 4-powered title that is "expected to launch with [a] free-to-play model in the summer of 2015." The genre is still unknown, though the source article says it's a "core game" designed for e-sports. What's a core game? Your guess is as good as mine, since that's basically a marketing term that could mean anything from hardcore to softcore to Andrea Corr. OK, maybe not that last one, even though MOBAs with Irish pop musician heroes should be a thing. [Thanks Zedrick!]
Blizzard, SOE, Relic pedigree meets free-to-play with Molten Games
Molten Games is a new development studio hoping to break free of the traditional relationship between developer and publisher. In a debut announcement, CEO and co-founder Jungwon Hahn says the studio will achieve this by putting gameplay and player experience "first with every decision" as the studio undertakes its flagship free-to-play online PC game. "We're just trying to take advantage of the free-to-play model, but we want people to have the same expectation of quality they would if they went and bought a $60 console game at the store," chief product officer Paul Della Bitta tells GI International. The pedigree at Molten Games is very much rooted in online games, with key talent having previously worked at Sony Online Entertainment, Blizzard and Relic Entertainment. Since its formation earlier this year, Molten Games has assembled around 30 employees, but Della Bitta expects headcount to rise to 60 by the end of next year. That headcount is in part thanks to VC funding from NCSoft, which has already given millions to Molten Games through a Series A round investment - a preferred stock allocation to investors typical of most start-up enterprises. Despite the investment, Molten Games will retain the IP to its unannounced game and NCSoft will not serve as publisher.
Molten Games picks up NCsoft funding, former Blizzard and SOE execs
NCSoft and Molten Games want you to know about... Molten Games. What is Molten Games? It's a new San Diego-based company that says it's "focused on breaking free from the traditional developer/publisher relationship and putting gameplay first and foremost." That's nice, we hear some of you saying, but why should you care? According to Molten, you should care for two reasons. Number one, the firm has secured a multi-million dollar investment nest egg from NCSoft. Reason number two, or more accurately, reasons two, three, and four, are team members Paul Della Bitta, former global head of e-sports and community at Blizzard, Jungwon Hahn, former head of Blizzard's Korean office, and Blaine Smith, former senior producer at SOE and a veteran of Relic's Company of Heroes and Dawn of War franchises. So, there you go. Molten says it will release information pertaining to its first online game "at a later date." [Source: Molten press release]
