38-studios posts

While there were a few rumors that hinted this might happen, today developer 38 Studios made it officially, saying they have acquired the Maryland-based dev studio Big Huge Games. The studio, best known for their Rise of Nations RTS series, was acquired by THQ in early 2008 but was one of the dev teams that THQ decided to cut or sell off in its quest to stay financially solvent earlier this year.

Although (as usual) specific financial numbers were not disclosed, 38 Studios has acquired "all of the company's proprietary IP, tools, technology, assets, and works-in-progress" from THQ. That apparently includes their upcoming RPG that had some screenshots and a trailer leaked on the Internet some weeks ago. The Big Huge Games teams will remain in their Maryland studio while 38 Studios stays in Boston to work on their upcoming mysterious MMO game.

It's been expected for a few years now but this week Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling made it official. He's retiring from baseball after a career spanning 23 years and three World Series wins (technically he's been retired for longer than than; he sat out last season due to an injury).

While Schilling didn't mention it in his retirement blog post on Monday it's likely that he will now devote much of his professional life to 38 Studios, the game development company he founded back in late 2006. The company has been working on a fantasy MMO code-named "Copernicus" but so far little concrete info on the game has been revealed.

While not as big as the San Diego Comic Con the New York Comic Con has grown by leaps and bounds in its short history; it was launched in 2006 with about 20,000 people but by last year's edition attendance had grown to 64,000 people. The 2009 show is being held on Feb. 6-8 at the Jacob Javits Center in New York City and the show will have a surprising amount of game-related panels.

Panels at the show will spotlight, among other games, Prototype, Warhammer Online, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, DC Universe Online, X-Men Origins Wolverine, Wanted, and the still mysterious 38 Studios. The Penny Arcade team will also be making appearances at the show. In addition Activision, Atari, Codemasters, Konami, Mythic Entertainment, Southpeak Games, Square Enix, Ubisoft and others will have exhibits on the show floor. All in all it's not a bad line-up of companies and activities if you are a gamer in the NYC area.

Game Politics has been doing an excellent job covering which game developers and game industry executives have been contributing money to the various US Presidential campaigns. It shouldn't come as a shock that most of them are Democrats who have given money to that political party's nominee Barack Obama.

So far nine game industry members including Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello, Take Two Interactive chairman Strauss Zelnick, Rockstar Games co-founder Sam Houser and Sony Online CEO John Smedley have all given money to Obama's campaign. Only three gaming reps have given money to the Republican candidate John McCain; Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, 38 Studios founder Curt Schilling and, in what might be a surprise to some, Maxis founder Will Wright.

In the PC game industry there are really only two types of games; those that are announced and those that are being developed currently in secret. These titles are what we are calling "black ops games". These are the titles that we know are in development but at the moment there's very little info on what these titles are even like, much less any word on a release date.

We have seen an example of this type of game earlier this week when it was revealed that Ensemble Studios was working on a planned MMO based on the Halo franchise. That game was canceled before the title was even announced and history is full of similar games that were being worked on but were canceled before they were officially revealed (of course there's also been a ton of games that were fully revealed but then canceled before their planned release...but that's another feature story)

So are there such black ops titles currently being made right now? You betcha. They are being created by the top developers in the business and range from first person shooter titles to RTS games to MMO projects. In this feature article, Big Download will take a look at a number of these games, some of which you may note even be aware of. However this is only the tip of the iceberg as many other PC games that we know nothing about are currently being developed as we speak...unannounced and still in the dark.

38 Studios, developer of an as-yet-unannounced MMO, has announced that it will use NaturalMotion's morpheme animation engine, reports Develop.

"When selecting middleware we are very careful to find solutions that enable us to focus our attention on our game," said Jon Laff, chief technology officer for 38 Studios. "Morpheme allows us to create very high-quality character animations quickly, cutting down on a lot of intensive animation design and implementation time."

Formed by baseball legend Curt Schilling, 38 Studios' mysterious MMO has talents such as author R.A. Salvatore and artist Todd McFarlane contributing their considerable skills to the work.

38 Studios -- a new development house working on an MMO codenamed Copernicus -- announced today that award-winning artist Thom Ang has joined the company as Director of Art. Previously, Ang worked for THQ and Electronic Arts. The Medal of Honor series is among his credits.

38 Studios was founded by professional baseball player Curt Schilling -- an all-too-rare combination of jock and geek. The company is in the pre-production stages of development on a mysterious massively multiplayer game. The game's staff includes famed comic book artist Todd McFarlane and fantasy author R.A. Salvatore. Not much else is known about the project at this point.

It continues to be one of the most high profile but still mysterious game developers around. 38 Studios was formed in late 2006 by famed Boston Red Sox pitcher (and massive Everquest fan) Curt Schilling to create an all new fantasy MMO game with art direction by Spawn comic book creator Todd McFarlane and a fictional background created by fantasy author R. A. Salvatore. Yet little else is known about the game itself, other than it will use Epic's Unreal Engine 3 as its graphical basis.

Today 38 Studios announced that it has hired Travis McGeathy, formerly of Sony Online Entertainment, to join their team as their systems design lead. McGeathy, better known to Everquest players as his user name "Rashere" was previously the lead designer for Sony Online's long running MMO title. McGeathy joins fellow Sony Online team members Jason Roberts and Steve Danuser at 38 Studios who joined the company in 2006 and 2007 respectively.. It may be a while, however, before we learn any concrete info on the actual game itself.