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
Delving into Castleville – new trailer and interview with Kotaku
Earlier this week Zynga Dallas published the first trailer for their upcoming Facebook game adventure “Castleville”. The game follows Zynga’s existing “ville” series of games such as Farmville, Frontierville and Cityville. Looking at the below trailer it can clearly be seen the game will be taking forward similar game mechanics ans art style of previous games in the series. Lets take a look at that trailer now: Read more
Zynga Dallas announces Castleville
Things have been quiet for the Zynga Dallas crew who used to be known as Bonfire Studios. Infact, we haven’t heard anything from them since they were acquired by Zynga this time last year. It was a pleasant surprise to see Zynga announce the studio had been working on an exciting massively multiplayer social game called “Castleville”. The press release reads as follows: Read more
Zynga acquires Bonfire Studios. Studio to become “Zynga Dallas”
Some very interesting news has just surfaced in the last hour. Bonfire Studios is no more following the acquisition from social gaming giant Zynga. You may recognise Zynga for its incredibly popular (and successful) MySpace and Facebook applications, FarmVille and Mafia Wars. It would seem as though the creative minds at Zynga recognised the talent at Bonfire with many of its staff having heritage from Ensemble Studios. Here is the press release straight from the horses mouth:
Yeehaw! We’re thrilled to announce that Zynga is moving into the world of boots and BBQ today, with the acquisition of Bonfire Studios. Bonfire Studios brings world-class talent and an impressive résumé to the Zynga team, some of their employees having created popular PC and Xbox 360 games, such as Age of Empires, Age of Mythology and Halo Wars. Read more
Bonfire’s Bill Jackson talks about opening a new studio in the current economic climate
Joystiq have had a quick few words with Bill Jackson the ex Producer at Ensemble Studios who has joined the Bonfire venture. He discussed briefly the last 12 months and says that despite what has happened with Ensemble “It’s actually a great time to work on innovative game designs and think about ways to change our business models to support those games.”
The full article can be read here: http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/17/weathering-the-economic-storm-start-ups-speak-out/
