Posts Tagged Gazillion
A million, billion, Gazillion (ahem) possibilities
Posted by Rockjaw in Jobsworth, MMO-related, Personal on October 16th, 2009
Today was my last official day working for Trion World Network. On Monday, I start a new job as Community Director for Gazillion Entertainment.
Yes, that Gazillion Entertainment; the company I called ‘the new 800lb gorilla‘ when they de-cloaked back in March, and who are working on a variety of MMOGs, including two based on Marvel Comics.
Not so surprised now, are ya?
Yes, I’ll admit that when Gazillion’s acquisition of the Marvel licence was announced, my interest was very definitely piqued, if that wasn’t obvious. What really got me intrigued was that they had acquired NetDevil, a development team who I’ve been a fan of since we worked together on Auto Assault. I made some enquiries, heard some pleasing noises, and six months later… here we are.
You might think that I’ve spent the last six months scheming to extract myself from Trion, but that’s absolutely not true. In fact, I’ve had a blast over there, and I’m genuinely sad that I’m leaving. The development teams behind Heroes of Telara and the Syfy-MMO(Action)RPG are packed full of great people who I’m going to miss and in the case of the Syfy crew, now don’t get to work with – boo! Both games are looking great, and unfortunately I now won’t be able to help them across the finish line. Don’t think I’m forgetting the MMORTS in production with Petroglyph Games, either; a trip to Las Vegas earlier this year convinced me that they are going to unleash something that’ll shake up the genre. I still believe everything I said about Trion back when I announced I was working there, however… when opportunity knocks, you don’t just sit back in your easy chair.
Gazillion has got a stellar line-up of games coming, including some I know are going to surprise a lot of people, and my new role allows me to work on all of them, as well as tasking me to direct community strategies for the entire company. Once offered, I couldn’t turn that down, even if it meant leaving behind new friends and some great looking games at Trion.
Weirdly – at least for me – this means that I’m back to full-on secrecy mode. I thought Trion had a lot of secrets, but even after signing on with Gazillion, I still don’t know about everything they’re developing! Roll on Monday….
It’s been a crazy couple of weeks and I’m sure it’ll be a crazy couple of months ahead, but I’m very excited about it; perhaps even ‘stoked’ or ‘psyched’ if we’re being American. Here was me thinking I was done with big, tumultuous changes in my life. I guess all I can do is strap in and enjoy the ride!
City of Heroes: Going Rouge [sic]
Posted by Rockjaw in MMO-related on May 14th, 2009
C’mon, someone had to. If I had a nickel for the number of times I’ve seen ‘Rogue’ misspelled as ‘Rouge’ on the internet, well, I’d probably be living in the US already where having a lot of nickels actually means something.
The first (or second) paid expansion for City of Heroes was haphazardly announced this week, which might have been some email software’s fault, or a cunning plan to fail to attempt to get buzz. Either way, er… mission accomplished?
It was interesting timing, regardless, with Champions Online spinning up the rumour mill (“We might end up on PS3! We might have microtransactions! We might have cake, and eat it too!”) and NCNC Paragon Studios trying to reverse their way out of the dead-end they seem to have ended up in after cracking down on Mission Architect farmers a little too hard. (Hey, I’ve got no problem with the policy, but from a community point of view, it was a classic case of taking a dump where you eat. Or gnawing on the hand that feeds you. Choose your metaphor.)
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Variety gives me a gazil – okay, four more thoughts on Gazillion
Posted by Rockjaw in Links of Others, MMO-related, Press on March 19th, 2009
While most of the gaming press pretty much shrugged and moved on regarding Gazillion (or in the case of some blogs, sneered – but hey, that’s what blogs usually do) Ben Fritz at Variety* did that crazy ‘journalism’ thing and got the right people on the phone to comment.
In the process, he discovered a whole bunch of new facts which are very interesting, and led me to some more thoughts. You absolutely should read the article, but I’ll pull out some corkers here:
1. Gazillion has eight ‘projects’ in the works.
Four we know about (LEGO Universe, Marvel Super Hero Squad, Marvel Universe, Slipgate Ironworks’ MMO) but that leaves four more they’re keeping under wraps. That’s pretty huge. Again to give you context, while at NCsoft there were usually half-a-dozen or more MMO projects in various stages of development in Korea, it was rare any of them were made public.
Right now, again by comparison, NCsoft has four MMOs in development that you know about (Guild Wars 2, Aion: The Tower of Eternity, Carbine Studios’ MMO, Blade & Soul) but I guarantee you more are under wraps.
Still, of those projects you’re aware of, some have been in development since 2005, and hey, you’ve known about others since 2006. With Gazillion’s announcement and lots of speculation that they’re releasing Marvel Super Hero Squad in 2010, they’re already ahead of the game. I have a sneaking suspicion other publishers may try to follow this ‘late breaking’ approach in future.
The new 800lb gorilla: Gazillion
Posted by Rockjaw in MMO-related on March 17th, 2009
If I had cornflakes to choke on, I might have done just that this morning. Big, big news:
Online game startup Gazillion Entertainment is announcing today a major partnership with comic book king Marvel Entertainment to build a series of online game worlds with Marvel’s comic book characters.
The first game is a kid-oriented online world based on brand-new Marvel property Super Hero Squad. This show for kids will debut on the Cartoon Network in the fall and the game will debut sometime in 2010. Gazillion, based in San Mateo, Calif., has already been working on it for a year.
Heretofore unknown, Gazillion is unveiling itself as one of the most ambitious game startups in the world. It has 300 employees and is squarely focused as a pure play company developing online game worlds for the mass market, with game projects based on Marvel, LEGO, and its own original properties.
Why is this big? Hmm, well, how about this:
- Gazillion owns, outright, four development studios including NetDevil, Slipgate Ironworks, Gargantuan and The Amazing Society
- They have a 10-year deal with Marvel to produce “any number of games” based on their characters
- They already have a casual, browser-based Marvel game in production (at The Amazing Society)
- They already have Marvel Universe in production (at Gargantuan)
- They have LEGO Universe (at NetDevil)
- They have a John Romero-created MMO (at Slipgate Ironworks)
- They’re VC-funded… there’s no Marvel money flowing in here
- Did I mention they have 300 employees already? (Comparison: NCsoft Europe had about 150 at peak; NCI had just over 400 at one point I believe.)
In other words, it’s sort of like, say, Atari announcing “Oh by the way, we bought Cryptic, Flagship, Red 5 and 38 Studios in the last four years. We just didn’t think to mention it until now.”
You said what?