heroengine posts

Second Star Interactive, a new game development studio founded by a number of industry veterans, has just been revealed. The studio, based in Northern Virginia, was created by Idea Fabrik, a Germany-based company that in 2010 bought the HeroEngine game development tools business in 2010. The team is lead by Darrin Hyrup, a founder and former executive at Mythic Entertainment. Other team members have come from Sony Online, Electronic Arts and other developers.

The Second Star Interactive team will naturally be using the HeroEngine for its games with the first one, as of yet unrevealed, currently due out by the end of 2011.

Yet another MMO developer has revealed itself to the world, although in an indirect means. Today Simutronics announced that their popular MMO game development tool HeroEngine would be used by the Pitchblack Games. The developer, based in Chandler, Arizona, will use HeroEngine to help develop their debut title, an untitled sci-fi MMO project that has been under development for about a year.

The company's official web site also reveals little about their company or the game itself. Today's press release does reveal the Pitchblack team has folks who worked on previous high profile MMOs such as Lord of the Rings Online, Star Wars: The Old Republic and others. Hopefully we will learn more about the developer and their MMO game plays soon.

The company who runs both a game development company and a game engine division is reorganizing. Nope we are not talking about Epic Games, Valve, or Crytek but Simutronics, the makers of the MMO-themed HeroEngine. Today Simultronics announced they will now have two truly separate divisions, HeroEngine and Simutronics Games.

While Simutronics Games is moving on to making games for social networks and the iPhone, HeroEngine will continue to expand and develop its engine for use by third parties, mainly for MMO game projects. It's highest profile game is BioWare's upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's also being used by ZeniMax Online Studios for the basis of their still unannounced MMO game project. Simultronics states it has secured even more HeroEngine license deals for a variety of unnamed projects including "a multi-title deal with a US publisher" and "stealth-mode projects from startups and major studios in China, Europe and the US."