Bob-Berry
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What's in a Name: Uber Entertainment
Bob Berry is the CEO of Uber Entertainment, which launched its debut title, Monday Night Combat, on Xbox Live Arcade last August. Here's his story on the origin of his studio's name: "At least since the late 90s the term 'uber' has been thrown around in online gaming communities. It's always meant 'powerful,' 'over-powered,' or just 'awesome.' It so happens that I was playing a good deal of Team Fortress 2 in the fall of 2007 when Uber Entertainment was conceived. 'Uber' was the perfect word to reflect many aspects of our business. It spoke to the kinds of games we would make, the fans we would connect with, and it would embody our general philosophy of hiring great people. The goal was to create a company that was indeed 'Uber.' "The company was born of a desire to make games differently. A fundamental part of this philosophy is our 'whiteboxing' process (there are many terms for it), whereby we create our core gameplay and do the majority of our iteration with placeholder art assets. The core team that was assembled shared the same philosophy and vision for making games. One such person was our art director Chandana 'Eka' Ekanayake, who took it upon himself to embody this philosophy in our company logo. The abstract man holding up the giant white box in an Atlas-like pose represents both our development philosophy and the Uber nature of the people that are the company." Uber's Monday Night Combat is currently available from the Xbox Live Marketplace for $15. Like this feature? Be sure to check out the What's In A Name Archives.
