Posts Tagged NetDevil

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.”

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