Hello from Bizarre Creations! You may remember us as one of the largest independent developers left in the UK, well-known for both the Project Gotham Racing and Geometry Wars series. We've just finished up on PGR4, and we're putting the final touches onto The Club as we speak. We've got a couple of announcements to make, so pull up a chair and listen closely...
It's not easy being independent. Signing new games is tough, and bringing new IPs to market as an indie (like we're doing with The Club) is one of the most challenging things our company has ever faced. As I'm sure you can imagine, the most dangerous time for any independent is the period in between projects (or more precisely in between publishers).
Our management team have been preparing for the future for some time now. We've finally found a solution which allows us to not only stay as secure and profitable as we already are as a company, but also to continue to create kickass games in exactly the same way as we're doing now.
The perfect solution for us is to join the ranks of Activision, alongside their other talented studios. It's a pretty incredible chance for Bizarre to improve ourselves and make the most of all the fantastic new opportunities this opens up. Also, given the excellent support Activision offer this can mean only one thing: better games.
This is fundamentally a different deal than some you've seen around the industry recently. Bizarre isn't a developer in financial trouble, and we're certainly not looking to be "saved" by a bigger corporation. We're a dev looking to take our games to the next level, and make the absolute best products we can possibly make. Likewise, Activision is not in the business of "buying out" struggling developers either.
As you can imagine then, Bizarre are very happy with this move. Here's the lowdown:
* Bizarre Creations continues to exist as is. We won't become Activision Liverpool or anything like that.
* We will have absolutely no redundancies.
* All of our teams continue to exist exactly how they are at the moment. Amax team (PGR4) and Shitstorm team (The Club) will move onto new games, whilst our Shared Technology team will use this opportunity to take our experience and tech to new levels and new formats.
* The Activision way of running things is "hands off". Bizarre continue to have creative control over what we do, we still run the studio how we see fit, and we still get to run our own web site and do all sorts of fun community things!
Let's talk games then... that's why we're all here after all. Well, we're no longer tied to just one platform for starters. Our future titles can be on whatever we please - we are a truly multiplatform studio now. Of course that doesn't mean that we'll be forced to make a port of every game to every console in existence... we simply have that option available to us.
Both of our two main game teams are about to start work on two new AAA titles for Activision. One will be a racing game, and the other a character game. Of course we'll make some more detailed announcements in the future, but be prepared for something big and exciting!
What about the now? Firstly, Geometry Wars will remain unaffected; we'll continue to expand and advance the series just as we were going to do before. The Club will still be released with SEGA, Geometry Wars Galaxies will still be released with Sierra, and PGR4 will continue to be supported after its launch in October. No massive changes here then...
So that's pretty much the idea behind it. Bizarre are happy because it means we're completely safe as a company, we all get to stay exactly the same, and we now have the opportunity to stretch our legs with some brand new game concepts. This is going to be fun...
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