Stormfront Studios is a video game developer based in San Rafael, California, and has one of the longest creative histories in the industry. The company has approximately sixty developers working on two teams, and owns all its proprietary engines, tools and technology. As of the beginning of 2005 over ten million copies of Stormfront-developed games had been sold.
History
Stormfront was founded in 1988 by Don Daglow, who had worked as a game programmer and later as Director of Game Development at Mattel Intellivision, and later as a producer at Electronic Arts and Broderbund. Stormfront's management includes veterans of Blizzard Entertainment, CNET, Walt Disney Studios, Electronic Arts, Industrial Light and Magic, Lionhead Studios, LucasArts, Origin Systems and Warner Bros..
Stormfront was originally founded under the name Beyond Software, but changed its name in 1991 when the trademark for Beyond proved to be difficult to enforce.
Upon its founding in 1988 Stormfront started work on a baseball title, which over the following eight years was to become the Tony La Russa Baseball series of games, working closely with baseball manager Tony La Russa. La Russa remains a member of the company's Board of Directors today. Daglow had previously designed or co-designed a number of baseball games, including Baseball, Intellivision World Series Baseball and Earl Weaver Baseball, the latter two with programmer Eddie Dombrower.
Stormfront's other initial games were a series of online titles for AOL, then called Quantum Computer Systems. These included the first original Play-by-email game, Quantum Space (1989) and later the first graphical MMORPG, the original Neverwinter Nights (1991-1997). Neverwinter Nights held the all-time record as the top revenue-producing online RPG for almost ten years until the success of Ultima Online in the late 1990s. BioWare subsequently purchased the rights to the name, and built a new generation of award-winning multiplayer RPG's set in the Neverwinter universe.
In 1990 the company began working with SSI on a series of Gold Box Dungeons and Dragons RPG games. This led to Stormfront's creation of an early RTS, Stronghold (1993).
Stormfront was the first video game developer to use motion control photography in a video game, in the Electronic Arts game Eagle Eye Mysteries, (1993).
Eagle Eye Mysteries was directed by John Madden Football game designer Scott Orr, who produced a long series of games with Stormfront over the following several years. These included Mario Andretti Racing and the original versions of the top-selling American auto racing game of all time, NASCAR Racing, which remains part of the EA Sports lineup today. Stormfront also did versions of John Madden Football and Tiger Woods Golf with Orr for EA Sports.
Although the game earned limited distribution in the United States, Stormfront's 1997 Discovery Channel game Byzantine swept the European Emma Awards at the Frankfurt Book Fair, winning honors as Best Adventure Game, Game of the Year, and CD of the Year.
Recent notable titles
In the last five years the company's most notable titles have been:
- Blood Wake for Xbox (2001). A featured title in Microsoft’s launch of the Xbox, Blood Wake is a fast-action naval combat game with real wakes and waves and the most striking water effects created on a video game console. Players battle enemy gunboats in 28 single-player missions and several multi-player modes. A wide variety of boats, weapons, environments, weather and waves generate a wide variety of play experiences. The game later became part of the Xbox Platinum line of older hits.
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 2002. Published by Electronic Arts for PS2 and Xbox and based on the Peter Jackson film from New Line Cinema. One of the top-selling games of both 2002 and 2003, The Two Towers allows players to join Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring in their quest to save Middle-earth from Sauron. Players can fight as Aragorn, Legolas or Gimli in this epic adventure that features scenes and music from the first two Lord of the Rings movies, battling Orcs, the Uruk-Hai, Ringwraiths and more. Characters can be upgraded with new moves and weapons as players prepare to play a pivotal role in the defense of Helm’s Deep. The game features extensive unlockable content, including a secret character and level and exclusive interviews with the stars of the films. Winner, Academy of Interactive Arts Sciences Award for Outstanding Achievement in Visual Engineering.
- Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone (2004). Published by Atari for PS2, Xbox and PC. A lone fighter, a brash sorcerer, a beautiful hot-tempered rogue. Players can switch which of the three characters they control “on the fly” at any moment to battle an onslaught of enemies. Based on Stormfront’s sophisticated game engine used in The Lord of the Rings, advanced AI consistently guides the characters you don’t control, allowing the player to jump from hero to hero to pick the ideal character to play in order to defeat large and dangerous enemies. The game was nominated for several major industry awards in both North America and Europe.
References
External Links
Pages in category "Stormfront Studios"
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