Posts Tagged Marvel
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?