Original Neverwinter Nights devStormfront Studios is closing down, due to failure to secure publishing deals for new projects.
A company rep explained the reason for the closure to CVG cousin Next-Gen: "Frankly, we didn't get pitched, and the project [we were working on] made no revenue."
The rep added, "The economy is such that the projects that we weren't winning, ended." The 33 employees at Stormfront learned of the news on Monday.
Stormfront has been around for nearly 20 years, having most recently worked on movie tie-ins Spiderwick Chronicles, Eragon and The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. It's also the developer behind the original Neverwinter Nights in the late 80s, as well as Stronghold, Blood Wake and others.
The rep said that neither Daglow nor any other employees have disclosed future plans, as the news is "still quite fresh."
to be fair, their most recent games have hardly had stellar reviews. Certainly Eragon and piderwick have been widely panned, and LoTR: Two Towers was ok, but nothing special.
So, whilst I'm sorry for the guys who will be unemployed, this is hardly a big loss for the gaming industry. Maybe it might be another step towards teaching developers that they actually need to make decent games, not just churn out rubbish...
It just reeks of bad management, take a talented and creative studio, sell out to movie producers to bring out crap spin offs. They obviously were happy to have the costs covered for production, and thought they would sit back and reap the profits...too bad they got burnt.
If I was one of those employee, I would go back to my basement and start working on another Neverwinter!
to be fair, their most recent games have hardly had stellar reviews. Certainly Eragon and piderwick have been widely panned, and LoTR: Two Towers was ok, but nothing special.
So, whilst I'm sorry for the guys who will be unemployed, this is hardly a big loss for the gaming industry. Maybe it might be another step towards teaching developers that they actually need to make decent games, not just churn out rubbish...
It's true what you're saying, but I can't help but feel a little bad. Neverwinter gave me hours of enjoyment - I absolutely loved it.
Admittedly, their previous efforts were not of anywhere near the same standard - but, these guys closing won't mean that we'll never see another bad kiddie-film-tie-in.....unfortunately
To clear up any confusion, Stormfront didn't make the NWN released in 2002; that game was created by Bioware. Stormfront were responsible for a much earlier game called Neverwinter Nights, released way back in 1991.
They also made Demon Stone, which is one of my favourite games on the PS2. So I guess the already slim chances of a sequel have been reduced to zero .
EDIT: Wait... the staff were told the company was being shut down on Monday? April the 1st is hardly the best day for that kind of thing .
EDIT: Wait... the staff were told the company was being shut down on Monday? April the 1st is hardly the best day for that kind of thing .
Haha....whose the April Fool now? Tuesday was April Fools day
Anyway it's always sad to see a dev go under, but in todays climate you either make good games that sell well, or if you go the cheesy movie tie-in route you need to at least make sure you get a big enough slice of the pie to survive. Guess they did neither.
Just another reason why it pays to be an indie dev. Self -funded projects don't get canned. Sucks for the guys losing their jobs, but I'm sure they'll be sucked up into EA or Blizzard, as they suck up everyone and everything sooner or later
Developers who don't belong to a publisher yet sell their games to publishers are still classed as independent developers. Thus Stormfront WERE an indie dev, and so are the likes of Valve, id Software, Remedy Entertainment, Frogwares, etc.
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