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From the ashes of Midway Newcastle, Atomhawk Design rises
One of our favorite things about the game industry (not the game business, mind you) is its unflappable resilience. Take, for instance, the story of Midway Newcastle. Even after the staff got a 60-day warning of the studio's imminent closure and was shut down preemptively, some members of the team were able to band together and form a new company, Atomhawk Design.Billing itself as "a leading creative visualization and digital art production company," Atomhawk plans on creating digital art for not just video games, but also "film and online." We're not sure how much of the ex-Midway Newcastle folks made the jump to the new company, but we've asked Atomhawk for comment.
Ex-Midway Newcastle dev spills the beans on the studio's closure
GUI artist Steven Pick has detailed on his blog the last five or so months of working at Wheelman developer Midway Newcastle (with heartbreaking detail, might we add). In doing so he reveals the various happenings at the developer while things at Midway HQ were falling apart. "The company was still operating as normal, but the Chapter 11 thing was like a silent dread-spectre hovering over all of us," Pick says of the February bankruptcy filings. And as for Necessary Force, the IP from Midway Newcastle that was revealed not too long ago? "We got to a point where the game could be pitched - at the same time, we had a 60 day notice through from the London office," Pick says. Unfortunately, the pitches fell through and the game disappeared -- aside from a handful of Edge Magazine writers who saw it, that is.Though he notes that a group of employees were picked up prior to the studio's closure by Crackdown 2 dev Ruffian Games, the remaining employees in Newcastle were caught off guard by a surprise early studio closure -- a surprise that brought with it the news that they wouldn't be receiving their final paychecks. In all honesty, it would be impossible to do Mr. Pick's entire story justice in a concise blog post, so do yourself a favor and give the whole thing a read at his site.[Via GamesIndustry.biz]
