garagegames posts

Why did InstantAction get shut down? That's a question that's been hanging over the industry since its parent company, IAC, made the decision to close InstantAction's operations last November. It's former CEO Louis Castle, now the new VP of Studios at Zynga, has finally spoken on the reasons behind the closure of InstantAction to IndustryGamers.

In short, Castle said that the company, which was trying to push technology that would embed high end games into web sites similar to Flash web videos, wasn't making enough money for its parent company IAC. He states, " ... we certainly were affected by the fact that it was quite an expensive operation. We still had quite a ways to go, six months to a year, before we would be completely on track."

He added, "I can't blame IAC, which put a ton of money into the project. At that point in time they just said it would just be better for them to discontinue operations and take the write-offs, because they had a strong year, and not continue to play in a space that they weren't comfortable in." The game engine part of InstantAction was successfully sold off and is now a separate company under its original name of GarageGames.

October 2010 saw the shutdown of InstantAction.com, the streaming/embed game publisher. However the company's Torque engine game business stayed operational while it tried to find a new owner. Today it was announced that new owners have indeed been found and the Torque game engine business will continue under the game company's original name GarageGames. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The newly revived GarageGames is now owned by Graham Software Development and will continue to support and update the many Torque game engine and development tools. The company has also lowered the price of all of its tools to just $99 each for a limited time. In a post on the company's web site its mentioned that the company will remain in Las Vegas and is currently hiring.

InstantAction.com, the heavily hyped browser based PC game service, is shutting its doors. In a post on the Torquepowered.com message board (owned by InstantAction) its director of operations Eric Preize stated, "Today, InstantAction informed employees that it will be winding down operations." It's currently unknown how many people are affected by the shut down of the company which had offices in Portland, Oregon and in Las Vegas.

InstantAction.com was formed in 2007 as a subsidiary of from the now former GarageGames as a web-based PC game site with a number of original 3D titles that ran in a browser. In 2009, Louis Castle, the founder of Westwood Games, came on board as the company's new CEO. Under his leadership InstantAction.com's business model switched to support games that are embedded to web sites like Flash-based videos. It released two games that used that technology (The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition and its own game Instant Jam) before today's announcement.

The company, whose parent is internet conglomerate IAC, has continued to support and develop GarageGames' Torque game development tool business throughout these changes to its business models. In his message today Preize stated, "Torquepowered.com will continue to operate while InstantAction explores opportunities with potential buyers for Torque." Last month Hi-Rez Studios purchased the Tribes game rights from InstantAction.com for an undisclosed amount.

[Via Gamasutra]

This weekend's out of the blue announcement of a new game in the Tribes series of sci-fi shooters by developer Hi-Rez Studios likely has the attention of some old school gamers who remember where they were when the original game in the franchise was first released. However it's also likely that many people reading this web site have never played, or even worse, never heard of the Tribes series.

So we decided to whip a quick history of the Tribes franchise for those of you who have yet to play any of the games in the series. The franchise was a massive influence of the first person shooter genre, particularly in its multiplayer features. In many ways the first game in the series was years ahead of its time but its successors never achieved the audience that the first game did.

The folks at InstantAction have been fairly slow to release new info about the plans for the company's web-based game service but today that changed with the launch of Instant Jam. This new Facebook-based games allows people to take their own music library and play it with the game in a Guitar Hero-Rock Band inspired interface. Players can link up with their Facebook friends to play the game and purchase new songs via Amazon.

This new project seems to be a slight departure from InstantAction's previously announced plans to offer high-quality PC games as embeddable items similar to Flash-based web video. Earlier this year we reported that InstantAction was teaming up with the indie game site Greenhouse to offer that sites games via InstantAction's embedded technology. So far the site has yet to relaunch with that tech.

Some of you may remember that over a year ago GarageGames and its InstantAction.com business announced that they had purchased the Tribes IP rights. They also announced plans to offer the original Starsiege: Tribes multiplayer shooter as a free game via the InstantAction.com browser site. They even showed a beta of the browser version running at PAX last September.

Since then, however, there's been little news on the progress of bringing the InstantAction.com version of Tribes to the public. In a recent video blog on the InstantAction.com blog site, reps from the company state," . . . we absolutely want to do these things but we have to take care of ourselves (InstantAction) first)." InstantAction.com is still in transition as of the time of this post; the main site is still down as they move to a streaming game business model. However the the video blog gave no clear idea of when InstantAction.com will be back in operation, nor when the promised Tribes release will take place. You can check out the video blog after the jump.

Just one day after OnLive announced their June 17 launch date for their streaming PC-Mac game service, a possible rival has announced its own plans, and it's a company you may have heard of. InstantAction.com, launched in 2007 as a way to offer 3D action games with a web browser, plans to relaunch and team up with Gaikai, a similar streaming games service that's headed up by game designer David Perry.

InstantAction reports that InstantAction.com will soon allow its games to be embedded in places like a Facebook page, a blog site or any other web page. It's partnership with Gaikai will allow InstantAction to stream games to consumers nearly instantly with little need for high end graphics At the time of this post, InstantAction.com is in the middle of its relaunch; IndustryGamers said InstantAction.com will complete its revamp at the end of March. That also happened to be when PAX East is happening and InstantAction just happens to be exhibiting at the show.

While the original Starsiege: Tribes first person shooter is available as a free downloadable title, wouldn't it be cool to just play the game on a browser. GarageGames and InstantAction plan to do just that very soon with their web browser based version of Tribes. We got a chance to play a beta of the Tribes browser game at PAX 2009 this weekend.

Basically if you played Tribes when it first came out almost 11 years ago you will be familiar with the browser based version. It's basically the same game with a few extra bug fixes, according to InstantAction reps. The game is also purely multiplayer (no bots here) so you and your friends will have to join servers and play in the game's massive levels, defend bases, build and repair turrets and items and more. In short it's going to be pure nostalgia fun.

But will there be more to come? While InstantAction already has a kind of spiritual successor to Tribes running on their servers (Fallen Empire: Legions) they did say that if the browser version of Tribes turns out to be a hit they could add new content to the game (the company now owns the rights to the Tribes franchise). There's no release date set for the InstantAction version of Tribes but based on our playtime it shouldn't be too much of a wait.

InstantAction, the browser-based action game developer-publisher, is getting some high-powered new leadership. IndustryGamers is reporting that Louis Castle, the co-founder of Westwood Studios, is joining InstantAction as its new CEO. Castle has been at publisher Electronic Arts since Westwood Studios was bought by the publisher and has spent most of his time at the company's Los Angeles dev studio.

IndustryGamers is also reporting that InstantAction, formed in 2007 by indie game developer-publisher GarageGames, is leaving its long time headquarters in Eugene, Orgeon and splitting up into two separate offices. On is located in Portland, Orgeon and the other is based in Las Vegas where Castle will be based (and where Westwood was once located by the way). This story is still developing and we hope to get more info on InstantAction's transition later this week.

Fans of the original massive outdoor multiplayer shooter Starsiege: Tribes just got some good news today. A port of the 1998 released game from the now defunct Dynamix is coming to the InstantAction.com browser game web site later this year.

InstantAction.com was created by indie game developer GarageGames which was founded by a number of ex-Dynamix folks. When InstantAction.com was launched in 2008 they included a Tribes-like game called Fallen Empire: Legions. However it appears that they now have the rights to the genuine article. According to Kotaku a playable version of the InstantAction.com port of Tribes will be shown next week at GDC. It will reportedly have improved graphics and better mod support