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Stargate Worlds studio head gates to Gazillion
Dan Elggren, studio head of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, is heading over to Gazillion Entertainment. CME is the studio responsible for Stargate Worlds, a game that always seems to skirt the edge of being Wraith-sucked in the womb. TenTonHammer has a quote from the Elggren's family blog (now locked), where it's revealed that over 100 employees have left CME since October and Elggren was no longer being paid. Allegedly, Stargate Worlds is only a few months from launch.We've contacted Gazillion for official word of what Elggren will do at the company. Hopefully, this time around, he'll get paid until he ships the product -- and, if it's not a colossal failure, maybe even after.[Via Massively]
Stargate Worlds studio head leaves company for Gazillion Entertainment
Dan Elggren has apparently left troubled Stargate Worlds developer Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment / Firesky for recently announced Gazillion Entertainment. This news certainly doesn't bode well for CME, who've been having financial trouble for a long while now. Dan is merely the most recent departure, although he seems to have weathered the storm longer than most.What does this mean for Stargate Worlds? Well considering all the financial issues and employee departures, it sadly points to a game that's less and less likely to ever see launch day. Frankly, it'd probably take a funding miracle to finish the project and in this currently downtrodden economy most investors probably won't be taking much risk.Moreover, what do we make of this MMO industry vacuum that is Gazillion Entertainment? They also picked up Jumpgate Evolution developer NetDevil last year while in stealth mode, and something tells us they're not done absorbing talent just yet. So much is known about the company and yet much more remains a mystery. Maybe they've got enough money to release Stargate Worlds, although they may not have the mind. Whatever ends up happening, we're sorry to see anything like this ever happen to an MMO, pre or post launch.
LEGO Universe character creation a soulful experience
If there's one thing that LEGO Universe has going for it over any other MMO on the market or coming anytime soon, it's creativity. When your game is based on a franchise that's seen countless boys, girls and men and women alike sitting on the floor snapping together little plastic bricks to make well, anything, you've got a powerful place to design a game on.And as you would expect, Wired's latest preview of the game shows of plenty of soul and creativity. Our favorite quote from the whole preview is easily this, "Mini-figs are endowed with a creative spark, a "soul" that will never die. They're also fairly exuberant: They'll start mashing the 'randomize' button on their own if you take too long to begin the customization process." We certainly hope that feature stays with the game until release, and that many more like it are scattered throughout the game.All that being said, LEGO Universe is still going to have all the MMO trappings such as story, conflict and combat. And that's just fine with us considering it'll let millions of people across the globe live our their LEGO ninjas versus pirates versus robots fantasies.%Gallery-49493%
Marvel Universe MMO will release in 2012
If you've been concerned about the potential supersaturation of superhero titles in the MMO space, it looks like you've got just a wee bit less to worry about. According to a recent interview with MTV's comic site, Splashpage, Simon Phillips, Marvel's president of worldwide consumer products, said that the Marvel Universe MMO won't release until 2012. The idea is to time the release of the MMO to better align with the one-two punch of the Captain America movie in 2011 and the Avengers movie in 2012. So, we're looking at approximately three more years before we can put our hands on the finished Marvel MMO, and geek out by swinging along with Spidey.Stepping back, it's also an interesting move strictly from a tactical standpoint. City of Heroes will be 8 years old, Champions Online will be 3 years old, and even DC Universe Online will be at least a year or so old, depending on the final release date. Computer hardware will most likely have moved ahead by then. So is it crazy to push it out so far into the future? Or crazy like a fox? Only time will tell in this superheroic battle of titles.
New Jumpgate Evolution trailer is very definition of large scale battles
The newest trailer for Jumpgate Evolution is nearly 100% all combat, aside from the brief moments of textual drama. And with all that combat comes a pretty large sense of scale that we've really only seen in a few MMOs since the genre's inception. This and wonderful joyous action being NetDevil's specialty, it comes as no surprise.Between the announcement of the game's minimum requirements and all of these gameplay videos, we're feeling very assured in our belief that Jumpgate Evolution is shaping up to be a visually stunning title that doesn't demand the world of our hardware. And so long as there aren't any significant bugs or crashes to desktops going on once the game releases, we'll probably be able to call the game 2009's most technically and visually impressive MMO.Check out the full trailer after the break, or download the HD version directly from Big Download's super-fast file service.
Minimum specs and new screens for Jumpgate Evolution revealed
With the month of March behind us and April in full effect, June continues to creep closer and closer. This is of deep significance for anyone awaiting the release of NetDevil's Jumpgate Evolution, as is today's announcement of the game's minimum hardware requirements.If this was a game of limbo, we'd have to say that NetDevil just won this month's tournament by creating one of the most technically limber MMOs we've seen in quite some time. How will the game actually look at lower setting has yet to be seen, although space games tend to scale down pretty well. We're also interested to see what the recommended specs look like, but for now you can consider us very impressed.Check out the minimum requirements just beyond the cut.%Gallery-18375%
Gazillion VP shares plans for Marvel Universe, Lego Universe, and beyond
If you've been reading Massively over the past few weeks, it's likely you've heard us mention Gazillion Entertainment. They're a company that seemingly came out of nowhere and revealed that they've acquired NetDevil (thus Jumpgate Evolution and LEGO Universe) and have two MMOs based on Marvel Comics IPs in development; Super Hero Squad is geared towards kids while Marvel Universe is aimed squarely at older comic fans. Our parent site Joystiq managed to get some face time at GDC 2009 with Gazillion's VP of Marketing Paul Baldwin who explained a bit about the company and their plans for the MMO industry.
GDC09: Joystiq interviews Gazillion VP about Marvel MMOs, Lego Universe and where the publisher came from
Gazillion. Up until a couple weeks ago, the word was representative of numerical hyperbole, and now it represents a publisher with massive venture capital backing and the MMO rights to major IPs like Marvel and Lego. We had a chance to interview the company's VP of Marketing Paul Baldwin -- with a fire drill intermission -- during GamesBeat 2009 last week. We asked him pretty much anything we could think of ... you know, considering we knew almost nothing about this new publisher.Joystiq: We're here with Paul Baldwin, who is the vice president of marketing at the "newly founded" Gazillion Entertainment? What's the deal there?Baldwin: Newly announced. The company was in stealth mode since 2005, so we've been around for a while, but we are "newly announced."You guys just appeared on the scene and got the Marvel license. I can tell you, we spent hours the day we first heard of the company, just calling up several journos and PR asking, "Who are these guys?" So, who are you guys?Good question, I have to first say that I was amazed myself that we were able to keep the company quiet since 2005, additionally when we acquired NetDevil in July of '08 and obviously we were very excited to get Jumpgate and of course Lego Universe, then we also acquired a company in Seattle, and we've been slowly building up the Marvel Universe studio, Gargantuan, in San Mateo, and throughout this period we were able to keep it quiet, which, once again, really surprised all of us. As I mentioned, the company started in 2005. At that point, we had kind of modest goals, frankly. We had an original IP, which is going to be a big client, high production quality -- World of Warcraft-like production quality -- coming out. That was the first product we had actually on tap.
Marvel Comics to share writers and artists with Gazillion for MMO
We were disappointed back in 2008 when we learned that the Marvel MMO project was being shuttered. But, roughly a year after the bad news broke, Gazillion Entertainment announced that they're working on a Marvel Comics MMO. Two, in fact. While a number of comics fans who play MMOs are excited about DC Universe Online (which is slated for release in 2010) comics fans often have their particular allegiances to a certain IP, and not everyone is a huge fan of the DC Comics universe. Marvel purists should have even more to look forward to from the upcoming MMO. Joystiq reports that Marvel Comics will lend its writers and artists to the project. That comes straight from Ira Rubenstein, who holds a senior position with Marvel's global digital media group. Rubenstein made the announcement during the GamesBeat 2009 conference in San Francisco.
GDC09: Run for the hills? No! We have a Gazillion interview to finish
In the middle of an interview with Paul Baldwin, VP of marketing at Gazillion Entertainment (and former Eidos exec during the good years), at GamesBeat 2009 (a side conference taking place during GDC), there was a fire drill. Just when we finally got some good answers to what the company is up to. So, while running exiting the building in an organized fashion, we kept on trucking and asking questions about the company's plans with its Marvel MMOs, Lego Universe and its other projects. We'll try to get that interview up as soon as we find a good internet connection.
World of Warcraft is for "hardcore" young male gamers
Yes. That's right. The most accessible MMO is too hardcore for the standard audience, according to Forbes.com and Rob Hutter of the recently unveiled Gazillion Entertainment. In a recent interview with Hutter, he was quoted as saying that the MMO market could expand outside of "targeting the hardcore gamer demographic," using World of Warcraft as his main example.Forbes.com paraphrased him as saying, "...Most people unaccustomed to MMOs might be intimidated by complex games like 'Warcraft,' Hutter says trends in technology suggest the audience for simple, well-designed games will grow quickly. The runaway success of Nintendo's Wii proved virgin gamers will try new titles if they are easy to play, while the boom in social networks like Facebook suggests people of all ages are looking for new ways to interact online, he says."While we understand what he's getting at and can appreciate trying to target gamers outside of the main demographic, we think he might need to pick a better example next time. WoW can be intimidating for first time users, but something must have clicked with the non-hardcore gaming crowd as many of them have stuck around in Azeroth. Unless, of course, all 11 million of the World of Warcraft subscribers have suddenly become hardcore male gaming nerds, and those newbies in our guilds are simply the stuff of illusion.[Via Hardcore Casual]
The Digital Continuum: Five PvP MMOs with potential
PvP and PvE -- both are part and parcel to the MMO experience. Some games focus on one more than the other, to be sure. Others try to strike an even balance, but ultimately a game seems to become one aspect more than the other.With so many upcoming MMOs in the next couple of years, I thought it would be worthwhile to see which games may possess a substantial degree of PvP potential. As per usual, I'm choosing five to keep things from getting out of hand.
NetDevil acquired by Gazillion Entertainment... last July
We've got good news that also happens to be a bit strange. Remember that new publisher that's now bringing us the Marvel MMO? Well, it turns out that NetDevil was actually acquired in July 2008 by the newly revealed Gazillion Entertainment. NetDevil's Scott "Scorch" Brown says in his post on the official Jumpgate Evolution forums that the choice was made due to Gazillion's shared view on game development. Specifically, the two companies value lots of focus testing, vertical slice development, iterating until things are great and only releasing games when they are ready.The strange part is of course the announcement of an acquisition that occured over half a year ago. We're assuming the delay was due to Gazillion wanting to make a big announcement splash, but it's dark business magic like this that make us scratch our heads sometimes.Is this news and that of Codemaster's chief operating officer unexpectedly departing from the company connected? It's hard to say, but at this point it's anybody's guess as to what's really going on.
Marvel signs 10-year contract, sees an MMO in its future
After the deal with Cryptic and Microsoft fell through, we weren't too terribly sure we'd ever hear another peep out of Marvel insofar as getting a game into the MMO space. However, it would seem that they've given it some thought - or more likely, thought about all the money that's here to be made - and decided to proceed on getting their own MMO into the market anyway. According to a story from the Wall Street Journal, Marvel has signed a 10-year deal with Gazillion Entertainment (previously NR2B Research, per VentureBeat) that will encompass not only a Marvel Universe online game that will tie into a Cartoon Network series, but also a renewal of the Marvel Universe MMO project for PC and consoles with Gazillion's subsidiary, Gargantuan Studios. Considering that Champions Online is in closed beta already, DC Universe Online is showing some pretty solid previews, and City of Heroes is still chugging along with a devoted player-base, it's going to be an uphill battle from the word go for this Marvel MMO. Sure, there will be comics loyalists who prefer the Marvel universe to the DC universe, but with four superhero MMOs to choose from? Everyone involved should remember that in MMOs, no amount of retconning will help a game that doesn't bring its best from the start. [Via Joystiq]
WSJ: Marvel inks 10-year MMO deal with upstart Gazillion Entertainment [update]
The Wall Street Journal reports this evening that Marvel Entertainment has struck a 10-year exclusivity agreement with upstart Gazillion Entertainment to produce online multiplayer titles based on its comic book properties. The paper's website indicates that the deal will be officially announced tomorrow.Marvel's previous foray into the MMO space, Marvel Universe Online, was eventually canceled by its publisher, Microsoft Game Studios. The title was announced for Xbox 360 and Games for Windows at the 2006 X06 showcase, and was in development at Cryptic Studios, makers of the upcoming Champions Online. Marvel and Gazillion will be going head-to-head with DC Universe Online, a joint venture between Sony Online Entertainment and DC Comics. More details as they hit.[Update: VentureBeat reports that Gazillion Entertainment, which was until today operating under the name "NR2B Research," employs more than 300 staff across four development studios. Its first title utilizing Marvel characters will be Super Hero Squad, an online game slated for 2010 that ties into a kid-friendly Cartoon Network series launching this fall. In big news for the MMO crowd, Gazillion's San Mateo, CA based Gargantuan studio is confirmed as developing a Marvel universe MMO for PC and consoles.][Thanks, J Blackthorn]
