Facepunch Studios

Facepunch Studios LTD.
Limited company (LTD)
Industry Video games
Founded 2004, incorporated in 2009[1]
Founder Garry Newman
Headquarters Walsall, England
Key people
 Garry Newman, Craig Gwilt
Products Garry's Mod
Rust
Revenue Increase US$ 22 million (2006-Dec 2013)[2]
Increase US$ 55 million (Dec 2013-2014)[3][4][5][6][7][8]
Number of employees
 Increase 11 (2006-2013)[9]
Increase 25 (2013-2014)[10][11]
Website www.facepunchstudios.com

Facepunch Studios LTD (commonly referred to as Facepunch, FPS, or FP) is a British independent video game development company headquartered in Walsall, England officially founded in March 2009[1] by Garry Newman. The company is most known for its sandbox video game Garry's Mod and is currently developing a video game titled Rust.[12]

History

Facepunch Studios was originally developed under the partnership of Garry Newman, Matthew Schwenk, Bryn Shurman, and Arthur Lee for the video game Facewound, in 2003. The group adopted Facepunch Studios as a company name to avoid looking “unprofessional”; and to further the development of their side scroller, the Facepunch forum was also established.[13]

The name "Facepunch" came from the brainstorming of names for the game Facewound - where something "stupidly macho" was required. Two names were chosen at the end: Facepunch and Facewound. Facewound was used for the game, but Facepunch was deemed "too funny sounding to just leave to die" - and so was used as the name for the company.[14]

In 2004, Garry Newman started the development of Garry’s Mod, originally a side project; which eventually took over the Facewound forum as well as most of Garry’s time. Facewound was later postponed and cancelled, and Facepunch Studio disbanded. Garry’s Mod has now become the flagship game of Facepunch Studios, and as of November 2013, the game has sold 3.5 million copies,[15] regularly being one of the top played Steam games, having been released near Steam's inception.

The studio has 20 employees working on Rust and 5 of them are working on prototypes like Deuce or Space Game.[11]

On September 24, 2014, Garry Newman acquired Before and the developer working on it, Bill Lowe.

Garry’s Mod

Never formally trained in code, Garry’s Mod started out as a sandbox mode for tinkering in Valve Software’s Source Engine. "I was just messing around with the Source Engine and it turned into this thing. It was mostly about letting me mess around with the Source Engine's features."[16] Not truly considered a video game, and more of a playground, the game takes assets from Valve Corporation's own video games (Half-Life 2, Team Fortress 2, Portal, etc.), and allows users to pose them with different tools offered by Garry's Mod. As of September 2014 the game has sold 6 million copies.[17]

Rust

Rust is an online multiplayer survival game, based on games such as Minecraft and DayZ.

Rust’s inception stemmed from Facepunch’s frustration with DayZ’s gameplay; inheriting its cruel player versus player model and Minecraft’s crafting and building aspects.[18] Rust’s grand concept was to develop a game where the players would be able to mold the environment: hunting, scavenging, gathering, and looting for survival; and players themselves impeding or assisting each other's success.[19]

Although the game has been criticized for being too brutal, Facepunch Studios has iterated that an artificial scoreboard, encouraging player to ‘play nice’, would be to the detriment of the game: “There shouldn't be a system hanging around forcing people to be good. It removes a lot of gameplay fun.” Instead the company opted to implement voice chat; keeping players from shooting each other on sight, out of fear.

Garry has stated that he would never be able to create a game as popular as Garry’s Mod, and that its popularity was a fluke, but Rust has proved him wrong. Rust’s release was a huge success, selling over 150,000 copies in two weeks, compared to Garry’s mod, which sold 34,000. As of 23 May 2014, more than 1.6 million total copies have been sold, making more than US$46.5 million in total.[7] Rust is still in alpha.[20]

Before

On September 24, Garry Newman announced that Facepunch Studios would be taking on Before to develop. Before is being created by Bill Lowe under the company.[21]

Games

Title Year Genre Platform
Facewound 2003 Shoot 'em up Windows
Garry's Mod 2004 Sandbox Windows, OS X, Linux
Rust 2013 (alpha) Survival/Sandbox Windows, OS X, Linux
Before Development Survival Windows, OS X, Linux
Deuce Development[22] Tennis Windows, OS X, Linux
Arcade Development[23] Arcade Simulator(?) Windows, OS X, Linux
Space Game (Working Title) Development[24] Arcade Shooter Windows, OS X, Linux

Forums

Front page of the Facepunch forums on 5 July 2013

Facepunch Studios holds their own forums which consist of various sections (such as sections for news, sections for video games unrelated to Garry's Mod, sections for general talk), which are the main appeal of the forums. It also has Garry's Mod and Rust sections for people to discuss the games and get support.

Originally created to support Facepunch Studios' first video game, Facewound, the forum and its community started to develop after the creation of Garry's Mod in 2004. It is now host to 49,350 active users.[25]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "FACEPUNCH STUDIOS LTD", Companies House, Company No. 06848626
  2. ↑ Newman, Garry (5 March 2013). "Mailbag | garry's blofg". garry's blofg. Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  3. ↑ Newman, Garry (21 February 2014). "Garry's Mod has just broke $30,000,000 !". Gamasutra. Twitter. Retrieved 21 February 2014.
  4. ↑ Wawro, Alex (3 January 2014). "Garry's Mod creator finds unexpected success with new game Rust". Gamasutra. Think Services. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
  5. ↑ Petitte, Omri (11 February 2014). "Rust hits 1 million sales after two months". PC Gamer UK. Future plc. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
  6. ↑ Newman, Garry (21 February 2014). "And if my calculations are correct". Twitter. Twitter, Inc. Retrieved 24 February 2014.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Newman, Garry (23 May 2014). "Now that 1.6 million people have bought the game we feel we need to make things happen a bit faster than that". PlayRust, Inc. Retrieved 23 May 2014.
  8. ↑ Newman, Garry (27 June 2014). "In other news.. Garry's Mod sold 152,000 copies in one day during the Steam Sale.. 50 times the normal daily average!". Twitter, Inc. Retrieved 27 June 2014.
  9. ↑ "Official Facepunch Studios website". Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  10. ↑ "Official Facepunch Studios Member Website". Retrieved 17 June 2014.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Narcisse, Evan (28 July 2014). "Some Fans Pissed At Rust Creators For Working On New Game [UPDATE]". Kotaku. Gawker Media. Retrieved 28 July 2014.
  12. ↑ "Play Rust". Retrieved 18 March 2013.
  13. ↑ "Web Archive, Facewound". Web Archive. Retrieved April 3. Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  14. ↑ Newman, Garry. "Q&A". Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  15. ↑ Newman, Garry. "Sales". Twitter. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  16. ↑ Totilo, Stephen. "Kotaku's Garry Interview". Kotaku Gaming. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  17. ↑ Prescott, Shaun (12 September 2014). "Garry's Mod has sold 6 million copies". PC Gamer. Future plc. Retrieved 28 November 2014.
  18. ↑ "About Rust". Facepunch Studios. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  19. ↑ Kelly, Andy. "Rust and player Freedom". PC Gamer. Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  20. ↑ Newman, Garry. "Garry's Mod and Rust Launch". Retrieved 3 April 2014.
  21. ↑ Newman, Garry (September 24, 2014). "Before". Facepunch Studios. Retrieved December 31, 2014.
  22. ↑ http://www.facepunchstudios.com/2014/07/30/deuce-devblog-1/
  23. ↑ http://www.facepunchstudios.com/2014/08/29/arcade-devblog-1/
  24. ↑ http://www.facepunchstudios.com/2014/08/07/formerly-known-as-riftlight-devblog-3/
  25. ↑ http://www.facepunch.com/

External links