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EA buys studio from the co-creator of 'Halo'
EA is still covering very familiar ground with most of its games. However, it's willing to branch out a bit: the publisher has acquired Industrial Toys, the studio from former Bungie CEO and Halo co-creator Alex Seropian. His team will join EA's Worldwide Studios team and help it produce "new game concepts." Don't expect him to simply recreate his best-known game, especially when his team includes just 14 people.
Halo co-creator's iOS game Morning Star getting a tie-in comic app
Morning Star, the upcoming iOS first-person shooter from Industrial Toys and Halo co-creator Alex Seropian, will be getting the comic book tie-in treatment in the form of an interactive graphic novel designed for Apple's mobile devices. Called Morning Star Alpha, the comic is being penned by Redshirts author John Scalzi with art by Mike Choi, who's known for his work on the likes of Witchblade, X-Force and Green Lantern. The plot of Morning Star Alpha will tie directly into the game -- and on some pretty deep, interactive levels at that. Readers will be able to make choices while reading the comic, which will then affect the game. In-game discoveries will, in turn, make new elements of the comic available for reading in order to provide more context to the on-screen action. There's no release date set for Morning Star -- which will also feature a score by System of a Down's Serj Tankin -- or the Morning Star Alpha tie-in, but we'll have more on both as Seropian and company reveal it.
Former Halo creator working on Morning Star for iOS
Alex Seropian is one of the first game developers I ever interviewed -- he's one of the original creators of Halo back at Bungie Studios (back when it was being planned as a real-time strategy title for the Mac), and I met up with him when I worked at a PR firm one floor below his company Wideload Games (which was later bought up by Disney). Now, he's started a new company in Los Angeles called Industrial Toys, and today they've announced their first title, a shooter called Morning Star that the team hopes will "reimagine" the genre "for touch." There's a teaser trailer for the game (embedded below), and as you can see, Industrial Toys isn't skimping on graphical quality. Other than a few fleeting images, however, there's not much more information about this one. It's got aliens, shooting and a new control scheme that's supposed to work great on touch devices. Industrial Toys says its "totally unreasonable goal is to completely change the expectations core gamers have for their mobile games." That's a totally unreasonable goal that plenty of iOS developers have already tried to accomplish, and one that I'd argue a few companies (most notably Epic, with the very popular Infinity Blade) have actually completed. But Industrial Toys does have a lot of cred with Seropian and the rest of the crew, so Morning Star will be one to watch.
Bungie co-founder starts new mobile studio
You know Bungie, the game studio that developed Marathon and Halo? Well, one of its founders, Alex Seropian, is now working on a new mobile-focused project. He's one of the brains behind Industrial Toys, a start-up development studio that intends to focus on mobile titles for core gamers. "We are driven to innovate beyond industry standards and trust in these inherent truths: that the future of gaming is about being accessible without sacrificing quality," says the company on its Facebook page. Industrial Toys has a star lineup; working with Seropian on the project is former Bungie veteran Brent Pease and Seven Lights alum Tim Harris. The group has a Twitter account and a Facebook page where you can follow its progress. [Via The Loop and Gamasutra]
