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Jumpgate Evolution jumps back into development, won't make June release
Jumpgate Evolution will not be making its scheduled June release. What, you've nova heard of a delay before? Anyway, following three years of development, NetDevil noted on its forums that the game is going back into the darkness of development to emerge at some point in the future. The company doesn't even plan on announcing a new release date until it has "established [its] road map for the next few months."The delay was caused after response during the "Friends & Family" phase of testing brought up a lot of feedback. Considering how competitive the MMO market is now, the company is probably taking the wise approach by polishing the "feature complete" title to a shine before release. MMOs don't get a second chance to make a first impression anymore.
Gazillion Entertainment Names Stuart Moulder as VP
Gazillion Entertainment have announced that their expansion into the MMO market continues with hiring Stuart Moulder as their new Vice President of Studios, with responsibility for game development across all of their studios. Gazillion recently announced that they had purchased Netdevil, who are developing Jumpgate Evolution and LEGO Universe. They also announced that they are developing two games based on the Marvel superhero licence.Moulder has most recently worked as Senior Vice President at Screenlife where he was responsible for bringing the Scene It? license to games as helping with the sale of the company to Paramount Digital. He also spent eight years at Microsoft where he was responsible for acquiring and managing companies such as Halo developer Bungie, Age of Empires and Halo Wars developer Ensemble Studios and veteran developers FASA of Mechwarrior and Shadowrun fame, although since he has left Microsoft we have seen Ensemble Studios and FASA shut down and Bungie has become independent.
Gazillion adds Microsoft exec to its roster
Gazillion Entertainment has picked up former Microsoft Game Studios exec Stuart Moulder to be VP of studios. He'll be tasked with management of all Gazillion development studios. Back in Xbox land, Moulder managed Bungie, Ensemble and FASA. Um, we'll take this as the wrong time to point out that two of those studios are dead and the third broke off in a successful coup.On a more positive note, Moulder has over 20 years of experience and started his career at Sierra ... okay, that's not helping either. We wish Gazillion and Moulder all the best in efforts to make a successful MMO publishing house.
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.
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 Universe MMO keeping masked until 2012
What with analysts anticipating new console launches and the Mayans predicting our doom, 2012 is set to be a pretty eventful year, though we'll probably be too busy living out our lifelong fantasy of being Ant-Man to notice. Simon Philips, Marvel's president of worldwide consumer products, let slip in a recent interview that the upcoming Marvel-based MMO isn't expected to be released until sometime in 2012. The exec told MTV comic blog Splash Page that the time will be spent creating an "environment that is going to be a totally immersive experience and a perpetual storytelling experience as well." Until that time, we suppose we'll just have to make do with dressing up in spandex and pretending to save the world ourselves. Or, as we've come to call it, Wednesday. [Via Big Download]
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: Marvel getting involved in Gazillion's MMO with art and writers
Speaking at the inaugural GamesBeat conference in San Francisco, Ira Rubenstein, head of the global digital media group at Marvel, stated that the comic book company plans to stand behind Gazillion's future Marvel-based MMO, lending its writers and artists to the project. Rubenstein didn't want to speak for Gazillion, but said that Marvel offers an IP that isn't very common -- a full universe of superheroes that has yet to successfully manifest in an MMO. Considering the 10-year deal Marvel has inked with the "new" company, there should be enough time to get some MMO based on the popular characters out the door.
