Robot grows from strength to strength. Receives investment from Tencent with Phase 2 OMDU beta coming in March
Exciting news for Robot Entertainment as yesterday the studio announced that they have secured a minority investment from Tencent, a large Chinese publisher who recently also announced that they would be publishing Orcs Must Die! Unchained in China. A minority interest means that Robot maintains control over its operations, this is an investment which secures additional funding / capital for Robot’s endeavours. Read more
Bruce Shelley on Game Designer Attributes
Legendary game designer Bruce Shelley has taken to the BonusXP blog to summarise some of the most important attributes a game designer should have when working particularly at smaller video game studios. Bruce has long been encouraging of a studio wide playtest, where everyone in the studio regularly takes part in playtesting the game throughout the whole development process. This can be called a design by playing approach. Read more
Robot welcomes Paul Hellquist to the team as Lead Designer
New year, new Robot staffers! Today Patrick Hudson, CEO at Robot Entertainment announced on the studios blog that Paul Hellquist has now joined the team as Lead Designer. Paul has an impressive career in the industry having spent a considerable number of years at Gearbox Software and Irrational Games before that. Paul has worked on Bioshock as Lead Designer and Borderlands 2 as Creative Director. Needless to say Paul brings a great amount of experience to an already strong team. Read more
Dave Pottinger of BonusXP reflects on 2014
Its been quite a big year for BonusXP, although you might not think it when noting that the studio hasn’t released any new titles this year. However since Cavemania’s release in 2013, the studio has seen some great accomplishments. BonusXP founder, Dave Pottinger has taken to the studios website to write a blog reflecting on the year, a happy end to 2104.
Robot to bring Orcs Must Die! Unchained to PS4
Today Robot Entertainment announced at the PlayStation Experience keynote that Orcs Must Die! Unchained will also be coming to PS4 along side the PC version of the game in 2015. This is Robot’s first return to console since the original Orcs Must Die! on XBLA and is the first title that Robot has produced for a Sony system. Read more
Tencent Games to publish Orcs Must Die! Unchained in China
Robot Entertainment have announced a new partnership to extend Orcs Must Die! Unchained’s reach into China. In addition to GameForge publishing the title in the EU, Tencent Games will be working to make the game big in China. Read more
Boss Fight Entertainment creating Age of Empires style RPG “Dungeon Boss”
Boss Fight Entertainment is the name of the studio whos staff are made up of the ashes of what was Zynga Dallas and originally Bonfire Studios, who were formed from the ashes of Ensemble. Phew! Thats alot of ashes and changes for these folk! The studio is lead by President and CEO, David Rippy, Chief Creative Officer, Bill Jackson, and Chief Operating Officer, Scott Winsett. All of whom are Ex-Ensemble staff. Read more
Robot Entertainment staffers featured on the AIAS website
Andrew Olsen a concept artist at Robot Entertainment along with programmer Shovaen Patel have been featured on the AIAS website. AIAS is the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. The prestigious website features studios that are part of the over 20,000 strong academy. These interviews are some of the very first to be featured on the website and give a great insight into how Andrew and Shovaen broke into the gaming industry. Read more
BonusXP forges partnership with Stardock
Today BonusXP, the studio formed out of some Ensemble Studios members headed up by Dave Pottinger, John Evanson and Jason Sallenbach have today announced that they have formed a publishing partnership with Stardock for their next game. In todays press release we learn that BonusXP are working on a PC Game, this follows the studios previous two mobile games, Monster Crew and Cavemania. Remember ES can also advise that their next game will be an RTS, perhaps going back to their core roots from the Ensemble days. Read more
Robot Entertainment at PAX (Part 2)
Following on from our first part of Robot’s PAX Panel review we now move on from looking at the studios history to present day to looking at some of the interesting prototypes they have been working on in-between OMD2 and OMDU. For the first time we get a glimpse at some of he games that could have been from the creative minds at Robot. Read more
