OXCGN – Xbox Gaming News Reviews Views

by AXIS of Reality

©2009 Alex Baldwin

Game studios have it hard at the moment. With the global recession starting to hit the industry, if your studio isn’t working on a proven franchise there’s no guarantee your game will ever see the light of day. Hell, there’s no guarantee your studio will survive the development cycle and may just sink into bankruptcy oblivion.

Here’s a look at some of the most loved studios that went bust this decade after the jump.

Ion Storm

Who doesn’t know Ion Storm? They are developers of what’s widely considered one of the greatest games of all time, Deus Ex, as well as its follow-up Invisible War. Ion Storm was founded way back in 1996 by John Romero of Doom fame, with several other notable developers like Warren Spector who joined in 1997.

It was very much like a dream team – taking some of the best people in the industry and getting them all together under the one roof. We all know that this paid off with Deus Ex, but there was also the very public mishap of Daikatana.

After Looking Glass studios closed, most of the staff were merged with Ion Storm which bolstered its reputation even more. Looking Glass was famous for the Thief series, which can be considered the origin of the modern stealth game genre popularised by Splinter Cell and Metal Gear Solid.

Only a further two games would make it out of Ion Storm before it was shut down – Deus Ex: Invisible War and Thief: Deadly Shadows. Both were excellent titles but highly debated about because of the massive expectations as sequels to some of the most critically acclaimed games ever.

In 2005 after the release of Thief: Deadly Shadows, Ion Storm was closed by its publisher Eidos. There wasn’t much press surrounding the closure, perhaps due to the slightly sour impressions Invisible War left in some of the fans of the original Deus Ex.

There were claims of ‘dumbing it down for consoles’.  Nevertheless, it was a massive loss for the industry. This hasn’t stopped Eidos from announcing Deus Ex 3 however, despite a new development team being assigned.

Digital Anvil

Digital Anvil was also opened in 1996. After the commercial failure of its first release Starlancer, Microsoft picked up the studio to be a first-party development house for their new Xbox console and PC. Predictably this meant scrapping some projects as well as adopting new ones.

In 2003 their first games to come out under the Microsoft logo were released: the very successful Freelancer on PC and the heavily marketed Brute Force for Xbox. Brute Force had mixed opinions on release as it had pretty much been promised by Microsoft itself to be ‘the next Halo’ at a time where every new shooter was touting itself as a ‘Halo-killer’.

Undoubtedly a great game, the expectations seemed to be a bit too much but they did their job with Brute Force selling by the truckload. It also integrated co-op directly into the gameplay at a time where people were beginning to see that multiplayer did not always need to be competitive.

Unfortunately the rumoured sequel would never find its way to the public, as Microsoft closed the studio in early 2006. Some of the staff were shuffled to other Microsoft-owned studios while others went to join Warthog Studios in the development of games for the ill-fated Gizmondo.

Oddworld Inhabitants

Suitably odd enough, the semi-closure of Oddworld Inhabitants in the previous generation was never very well explained.

Opened back in 1994 to exclusively develop the Oddworld series, Oddworld Inhabitants gained quite a reputation for itself. Starting off with Abe’s Oddysee on the PS1, the studio quickly gained a following for its completely unique style and amazing universe of Oddworld.

At that time platform games were generally very family-oriented with Mario, Sonic and other talking animals leading the way. Creator Lorne Lanning showed a different possibility of using fantastical creatures to parallel modern political and environmental issues.

The game’s style was very deceptive with lots of adult content and mature themes hidden beneath a world of Mudokons, Scarbs and Paramites. It recalled the style of Tim Burton in its twisted fantasy vision.

The follow up Abe’s Exodus was very similar before Munch’s Oddysee at the launch of the Xbox threw the game perhaps a bit too forcefully into 3D with the new lead protagonist. While the game sold reasonably well, it wasn’t a blockbuster hit by any margin. This may have been an early ominous sign before publishing rights switched over to EA for their final game.

Stranger’s Wrath was a critical smash hit, scoring glowing reviews for its unique take on the first-person shooter where the player was required to hunt down literally live ammo to fire from a crossbow, such as skunks or bees. Unfortunately the games was also one of the lowest selling of the generation, with director Lorne Lanning publically aiming the blame at EA for next to no marketing.

Soon after that Oddworld Inhabitants announced they were leaving the games industry to focus on CG feature films, which made sense from the incredible CG cutscenes that were a highlight of the Oddworld games.

Unfortunately nothing has been heard from them since, with even their website oddworld.com remaining static with a ‘New site coming soon’ message since 2006. It’s just…..odd.

Ensemble Studios

Now this one was very public. Ensemble, started in 1997 are best known for their massively popular Age of Empires / Mythology series on PC. Along with Blizzard and Creative Assembly, Ensemble is one of the most respected studios when it comes to Real-Time Strategy games.

It’s no surprise there was a lot of anticipation when Microsoft announced they were taking that knowledge to create a new RTS in the Halo universe, Halo Wars.

Halo Wars largely delivered on the promise of finally making RTS work on console without a keyboard, but not without sacrifice. Shortly before the release of Halo Wars, Microsoft suddenly shut down the studio in response to the global economic recession in the effort to restructure its internal studios.

According to employees there was little to no warning, with Halo Wars being their final game.

Since then two studios have emerged from the ashes: Robot Entertainment which will handle patches and future content for Halo Wars, and Bonfire Studios of which little is known yet.

FASA Studio

Another Microsoft studio, Fasa came from a company that created tabletop games before being bought by Microsoft in 1998 to create MechCommander and MechWarrier 4 on PC. One of their success stories is Crimson Skies on Xbox, an acclaimed arcade flying game that demonstrated the capabilities of the Xbox’s infant Live online service.

Their next title, Shadowrun on the PC and Xbox 360 didn’t quite have the same effect. Publicised very much as an online-focused title with the new crossplay feature that allowed Xbox 360 and PC gamers to compete over Live, some design decisions and mechanics ensured it never got the success Microsoft was expecting. Unsurprisingly Fasa was shut down later that year.

Auran Studios

An Aussie developer, Auran made a name for itself through the Train Simulator series before starting on an incredibly ambitious project: Fury. An MMO fighting game, Fury promised to revolutionise MMO combat while the hype machine went through the roof.

On release this did not translate into sales, however, as World of Warcraft was entering its peak with the rest of the MMO audience in Guild Wars or City of Heroes. Fury flopped, and it flopped hard. Auran had fed so much money into the project that literally the entire company was resting on the seemingly inevitable success of Fury that never came. Aurun quickly went broke with the remnants of the studio going back to Train Simulator and casual games.

Nowadays Fury can sometimes be found in bargain bins or lying in a dusty corner of the basement; proof that sometimes a winning concept and massive hype can backfire.

Acclaim Entertainment

Do you still remember Acclaim? Once one of the largest and most successful studios in the world during the N64 / PlayStation / Saturn generation, Acclaim had franchises to its name such as Turok, Dave Mirra BMX, Spiderman games, WWF (before it was WWE) and many will have forgotten even Burnout 1 and 2 were Acclaim-published.

If you want to look for where it started to go wrong you don’t need to look hard to find Turok Evolution at the forefront. Evolution was the planned first game of the wildly successful Turok series to jump to the Xbox / PS2 / GC / Dreamcast generation and with it came massive marketing campaigns including the controversial ‘name your first baby Turok’ competition.

Unfortunately, the game was released to mediocre reviews contrary to previews labelling it The Next Big ThingTM. While we were promised roaming through forests, seeing complete ecosystems at work and the never-before-seen AI of the dinosaurs, what we got was an unimpressive linear shooter heavy on the gore but not much else. I can remember walking into EB Games the month after it was released to see the preowned games section swamped with piles of copies reduced to a quarter its original price to clear.

Other signs of Acclaim’s troubles was the poorly conceived BMX XXX (initially Dave Mirra BMX XXX until he disassociated himself with the project), a hybrid of extreme sports which was very popular at the time and porn. Simply take a broken version of the quite good Dave Mirra BMX 2, replace the riders with naked girls and reward the player with videos of strippers. How could it miss? Perhaps making the game fun would have helped.

Like many successful studios of the N64 / PS era, their success did not always carry over into the new generation and Acclaim quickly sank below millions of dollars in debt from one commercial failure after the other. These days the name and logo live on in another studio calling itself Acclaim that make such titles as My Diva Doll, Ponystars and Prize Potato.

Other Notable Studios

There are too many shut down studios to write about here, so here’s a brief list of some of the others I couldn’t fit in:

- ACES Studios (Microsoft Flight Simulator)

- Black Isle Studios (Fallout, Planetscape: Torment, Icewind Dale)

- Pandemic Brisbane (Destroy All Humans 1 & 2)

- Free Radical for about 3 days before Crytek bought them (TimeSplitters, Star Wars Battlefront 3, Haze)

- Clover Studio (Okami, Viewtiful Joe, God Hand)

- Big Huge Games is due to close if not bought in the next month (Rise of Nations)

©2009 Alex Baldwin

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