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 →
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 →