Stormfront Studios

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Stormfront Studios Inc.
Type Private
Founded San Rafael, California (1988)
Headquarters San Rafael, California
Key people Don Daglow, President & CEO
Industry Software & Programming
Products Eragon VU Games
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers EA
Blood Wake Microsoft
NASCAR Racing series EA Sports
Madden Football EA Sports
Neverwinter Nights MMORPG on AOL
Tony La Russa Baseball SSI
Gold Box Dungeons and Dragons Games, SSI
Various Interactive Television demos
Revenue N/A
Employees ~75 (2005)
Slogan N/A
Website http://www.stormfront.com

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 50 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.

The company has received major awards and award nominations from The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, G4 Television, BAFTA, The EMMA Awards, the Software Publishers Association and many magazines and websites.

Contents

[edit] History

Stormfront was founded in 1988 by Don Daglow, who had worked as a game programmer and then as Director of Game Development at Mattel Intellivision, as a producer at Electronic Arts, and as a production executive at Broderbund. Stormfront's management includes veterans of Blizzard Entertainment, CNET, Walt Disney Studios, Electronic Arts, Industrial Light and Magic, Lionhead Studios, LucasArts, Origin Systems, Warner Bros. and Weta Digital.

Stormfront was originally founded as Beyond Software, but changed its name in 1991 when the trademark for Beyond proved difficult to enforce.

[edit] Highlights 1988-1993

  • Tony La Russa Baseball. Upon its founding in 1988 Stormfront's first project was 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.
  • Neverwinter Nights. Daglow had worked on game projects with Kathi McHugh and Steve Case of AOL (then called Quantum Computer Services) since early in AOL's history. Apart from baseball, Stormfront's initial projects were a series of online titles for AOL, including 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.
  • Gold Box D&D Games. In 1990 the company began working with SSI on a series of Gold Box Dungeons and Dragons RPG games. This led to the company's first #1 hit, Gateway to the Savage Frontier (1991), and the first game where an AI character might fall in love with the player (depending on how they reacted to situations in the game), Treasures of the Savage Frontier (1992).
  • Stronghold. These two games in turn led to Stormfront's design of an early RTS, Stronghold (1993). Stronghold was the first RTS to use a 3D perspective.

[edit] Highlights 1994-2000


[edit] Highlights 2001-2006

  • 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 classic 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 movies in the The Lord of the Rings film trilogy, battling Orcs including 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.
  • 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 Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Interactive Achievement Awards and BAFTA Awards.
  • Eragon (November, 2006). Published by Vivendi Universal Games for Xbox 360, PS2, Xbox and PC, based on the Twentieth Century Fox movie Eragon, adapted from the best-selling Christopher Paolini fantasy novel.


[edit] Interactive TV

Stormfront has had an ongoing involvement in the development of games for Interactive TV, and has produced demos for companies including OpenTV.

[edit] List of Stormfront Titles

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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