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Richard Garriott's Portalarium raises $7 million in funding
Richard Garriott designed Ultima Online and Tabula Rasa, and he has also been to outer space. This has apparently convinced several investors that funding his new company Portalarium is a sound decision, as it was recently announced that Portalarium has secured roughly $7 million in investment capital. The money is being pushed into the final stages of development on the company's first title, Ultimate Collector, which is slated for release later this summer on Facebook, mobile, and browser-based platforms. Some of the funds are also earmarked for development on the company's second game, alternately known as both Ultimate RPG and New Britannia, which does not yet have a release window. The chief investment firm was London-based m8 Capital, but several other sources also contribued to the groundswell of support, including Richard Garriott himself. Last month, the company announced that it will be working through the Zynga Platform Partners program to publish Ultimate Collector.
Former Frogster CEO forms new F2P publishing company
Fans of free-to-play games just received yet another outlet for their addiction, as former Frogster CEO Andreas Weidenhaupt has announced the founding of a new publishing company, named Infernum. The company will be working to bring free-to-play MMOs from around the world to Western audiences. Weidenhaupt claims, "The market for high-quality MMO games that are free to play is growing dynamically and we intend to become a major player in the space." The company is already hard at work bringing those "high-quality MMO games" to its customers, with Weidenhaupt noting, "We've already begun assembling a top-notch team and are looking to fully utilize our resources by bringing some great games to the western world in 2012." So if you're in the market for a shiny new F2P title, keep your eye on Infernum and find out what it will be bringing to the table.
Zentia developer ChangYou spends $68 million on a browser game company
Brower-based gaming is starting to really catch on, with a variety of games either staking out the browser as the sole required program or offering play options to browser-bound players. ChangYou, the development company most known to western readers for its game Zentia, has apparently decided that the browser field is worth investing in to the tune of $68.3 million, as it was just announced today that the company had purchased a controlling interest in Chinese company Shenzhen 7Road Technology Co. The acquisition is intended to complete on June 30th, with up to $32 million more up for grabs if Shenzhen 7Road manages to meet certain performance milestones through the end of next year. While there's plenty of reason to speculate about what this means for the future, it's certainly interesting to note that a free-to-play game developer is making such a large investment in a browser company -- an action that could have long-term ramifications for both present and future games.
New studio formed from veteran MMO talent
Video game development bears a certain similarity to rock music, insofar as a successful project usually leads to people breaking off and going in new directions. Of course, unlike the frequently unsuccessful solo careers in the music industry, breakaway studios can often reach new heights. Second Star Interactive is a new studio working as a division of Idea Fabrik, the company behind the HeroEngine being used by upcoming games such as Star Wars: The Old Republic. The team's goal? To release a new game using the engine by the end of 2011 It's a tall order, but there's a solid log of talent on the team -- Mythic Entertainment and Warhammer Online veterans such as Darrin Hyrup, Lori Hyrup, and Cooper Buckingham working alongside Ultima Online's Tim Cotten and Eric Piccione. While there are no details to be had on the game at this time, it's certainly being put together by a team with the experience to make it excellent. Time will tell what comes out of the studio, but we should be seeing something new by the end of the year.
BioWare loses its SWTOR community manager [updated]
Today on the TOROCast forum, it was rumored that Community Manager Sean Dahlberg had left BioWare. Members of the SWTOR community did believe it odd that he did not show up to PAX, which was supposed to be the biggest event of the year for SWTOR. He even tweeted to the Jedi Archive on Saturday: "Nope, I'm back in Austin but Brian is there! Granted, part of me wants to just drive there but I'd be late." That gave everyone the impression that he had a lot of work to do. However, today he updated his twitter page so that it no longer reflected his BioWare title nor a link to swtor.com. Although there has yet to be word from Dahlberg himself, Joanne Laroche, the Senior Community Coordinator, recently posted this on the official Old Republic website: "Sean Dahlberg has recently left BioWare. We would like to thank Sean for doing a great job building the TOR Community and we wish him well in his future endeavors!" This confirms that Dahlberg has left BioWare, but it still does not answer why this has happened. Massively will keep an eye on this story and on Dahlberg's personal site for new developments. Until then, we wish the best for Sean and for the game. [Nice catch, "fo diddy" at TOROcast!] Update: Sean posted on his personal blog and wanted to let everyone know that he did not fall off the end of the earth. As for what's next for Mr. Dahlberg, he had this to say, "What's in the next chapter in the life of Sean... well, that would be giving out information and we all know I don't do that. I'd say just kidding but I actually can't talk too much about that at this point. Soon™ but not yet."
GDC looks to Canada in 2009
As our neighbor to the North continues to grow in size and scale within the games industry the group responsible for the Game Developers Conference has taken notice.Think Services' Game Group has announced a partnership with Reboot Communications to bring GDC to Canada in association with New Media BC's Vancouver Digital Week in May 2009, according to GamesIndustry.biz.After breaking attendance records at the recent Austin GDC, organizers hope to bring its popular networking and learning conference to the North with a similar level of success.*Yes, we're aware of the irony in this post considering it was written by a Canadian.
Next-Gen talks with Age of Conan's Gaute Godager
The Age of Conan interviews are all over the place lately. Gaute Godager is the game's director, so when we saw that Next-Gen had sat down with him to talk about FunCom's upcoming barbarian invasion there was little doubt that it would be an interesting read. The interview covers the usual subjects of combat and maturity that AoC always has people asking about, but then Gaute is asked a much more interesting question. He's asked how he feels about the MMO market and whether or not he thinks that people are playing more than one MMO at a time, let alone a very mature one. Part of his response is, "People say: "Don't go too mature – that's risky; you'll lose all the 14 year olds." But there's not that many! They just make a lot of noise." which could be true according to FunCom's statistics which show that the average player is around 25 years old. The MMO market has definitely ballooned to a much larger size than it was several years ago; this could be the perfect time for a game like AoC to succeed.
Disney investing a cool $100M in virtual worlds
Onling gaming sites Club Penguin and Webkinz have apparently been doing so well that Disney has decided to invest in a deluge of cute, adorable virtual worlds. They plan on creating up to ten (yeah that's right, we said ten) virtual worlds that will tie into different properties. We already know about the as-of-yet unnamed Cars game Disney is making, that's just the first of many. The brand new virtual world is Pixie's Hollow and this one is based on Tinker Bell. The game is being developed with creative input by the same people responsible for Disney's theme park rides. The game is scheduled for debut this summer, just in time to help build buzz for the upcoming Tinker Bell feature film in the fall. Considering that Disney is a $35.5 billion dollar company, these virtual worlds are definitely a small investment overall at $5 to $10 million each; at least in comparison to a big-budget MMO.All in all, it would seem that Disney is rather serious about this method of entertainment and rightfully so. With plans to make ten games, an easy prediction is that we'll see plenty of new releases over the coming years. What isn't an easy prediction is guessing just how well this endeavor of theirs will work. Disney is only the latest company to join the likes of Mattel, Nickelodeon and Lego -- just to name a few -- looking for some of that pie. It should be interesting to see how this market expands over the next couple of years, now that it's starting to get crowded.[Via Virtual Worlds News]
