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Former Blizzard dev starts Atomic Operations game studio
Industry veteran Chris Millar has been around -- he's been with Blizzard since the WarCraft II days, and has worked on everything from Black and White 2 to Fat Princess – but now he's off to head up his own company called Atomic Operations. In this quick Q&A with Gamasutra, he says that the company will be a grab-bag of methods and products, all using "an evolved production method similar to that of movies." They've already got a project out the door, too: Atomic is the company that's supporting Fat Princess, with the bugfixes released the other day and presumably more to come. Millar and Atomic Operations join the multitude of other Blizzard veterans off working on their own companies. Let's see, there's Keith Lee and his crew at Booyah, the ex-Blizzard folks at Red 5 Studios, the unfortunate souls at Castaway Entertainment and Flagship Studios (now Gravity Bear and Gargantuan Studios), new WoW TCG licensees Cryptozoic, and a few other little developers and divisions headed up by ex-Blizzard devs. Whew, that's a whole lot of babies -- Blizzard is like the Zeus of gaming studios lately. What are they serving in the cafeteria over there, startup cola?
Gravity Bear comes out of hibernation
Late last year, Diablo 2 art director and co-founder of Flagship Studios, Phil Shenk, set out to form a new company: Gravity Bear. As CEO, he brought along Hellgate: London senior software engineer Kevin Klemmick to serve as the new studio's technical director. Both men subsequently vanished. Until yesterday, that is, when Shenk updated the Gravity Bear blog with news the dev will make its "first 'official' press announcement in a few days."The company's first game -- recently tested by "friends and family" according to Shenk's Twitter feed -- will be for "social platforms" (read: Facebook and the like) but its exact nature is unknown. We're hoping for a Diablo-like dungeon crawler announcement "in a few days," but that unfortunately wouldn't really be in keeping with Gravity Bear's cutesy mascot. (Unless said cartoon bear has a thirst for blood ... and you should never underestimate those guys.)
Former Flagshipers form Gravity Bear
Phil Shenk has become the latest to row ashore following the sinking of Flagship Studios, announcing the launch of a new development studio awesomely named Gravity Bear. Shenk will serve as the CEO, while according to Shacknews another Flagship survivor, former Hellgate: London senior software engineer Kevin Klemmick, has climbed aboard the dense grizzly as technical director. The studio is the third to emerge from Flagship's splintered remains, following the founding of Runic Games and Turbine's new Redwood City, CA branch in recent months. Nothing yet has been revealed regarding Gravity Bear's focus or future projects, though we have to wonder if the experience of being sucked into Flagship's financial hellgate was enough to sour the company on dabbling once more in anything remotely MMO.
