Gazillion

City of Heroes: Going Rouge [sic]

Published May 14, 2009

 

City of Heroes: Going Rogue

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? Continue reading →

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City of Heroes: Going Rouge [sic]

Published May 14, 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.)
Continue reading →

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Variety gives me a gazil – okay, four more thoughts on Gazillion

Published March 19, 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. Continue reading →

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The new 800lb gorilla: Gazillion

Published March 17, 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. Continue reading →

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