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GTE Interactive Media

GTE Interactive Media was founded by Richard E. Robinson back in 1990. The company was founded as a division of GTE Vantage. That was a wholly owned subsidiary of the now out of use telecommunication supplier GTE. The company was based in Carlsbad, California and the division’s focus was on creating videos of interactive television programs. In addition, the company had also another focus which was creating home console cartridges, interactive video game products for arcade machines and CD-ROMs. All those products were developed and published under the GTE Entertainment brand.

History

We mentioned earlier that the company was founded back in 1990. However, the company was originally founded under the name GTE ImagiTrek and the name was changed in 1994 to GTE Interactive Media. The vice president has made few statements where he mentioned that this division was viewed as a complementary addition to GTE’s plans. By those plans he meant creating broadband video services networks. One year later, the company signed a contract for partnership with Nintendo for creating arcade games and online networking. Moreover, after the signed partnership, not only a month has passed, they previewed its first title, FX Fighter in Las Vegas at Consumer Electronics Show. The same year, the company has grown and had the highest number of employees in their history.

Sometime later, the company started having problems in the video game market putted a pinch on GTE Interactive Media because of deregulation. That resulted into firing employees from the division. GTE, the parent company of the division, planned to end its own content development in favor of feeding its networks with the quickly growing marked of third party content. Moreover, the company has failed to find a partner or a buyer in order to help their business. Because the search for a partner failed, the company officially announced in January 1997 that they would fire 85 workers and will end all of their operations on March 14, 1997.

With that announcement and after firing the employees, the division was officially defunct on March 14, 1997. According to some reports, back in 1996 the company had the highest number of employees which was 120. However, only a year later, the division was officially closed.

#GTE Interactive Media #games #gaming #video games

Square Enix Europe

Square Enix Limited, previously known as Domark Limited and Eidos Interactive, is a video game publisher company that’s doing business as Square Enix Europe. The company is a subsidiary of Square Enix located in Europe. The company’s history goes back to 1984 when it was founded by Dominic Wheatley and Mark Strachan under the name Domark. The company was named after the names of the founders. Years later, in 1995, the company was bought by Eidos and was merged with 2 studios and the following year was renamed to Eidos Interactive. In addition, Eidos Interactive was bought in 2005 by SCi and in 2009; Eidos Interactive was sold to Square Enix. The same year, on 9 November, Square Enix finalized the merger of its current European division with Eidos Interactive. As a result to that, the company was officially renamed to Sqaure Enix Europe.

Moreover, intellectual properties that are owned by the company include Just Cause, Tomb Raider and Dues Ex, among many other.

Beautiful Game Studios

Beautiful Game Studios is a video game developer studio located in London, England. The studio is founded back in 2003 and was officially announced as inner development team of Square Enix Europe (back then Eidos Interactive) on 30 January 2004. It’s an inner team that the main focus would be on the development of Championship Manager. That was because the original creator of the series, Sports Interactive, left Eidos Interactive in 2003. Years later, in 2009, Eidos was officially bought by Square Enix and the name was changed to Square Enix Europe. After the acquisition, the parent company announced that the studio will be under restructuring in order to build a successful commercial future for the Championship Manager brand. Within that restructuring, about 80% or more of the works were relocated to Eidos Shanghai or cut in a cost-cutting exercise. However, Roy Meredith was still kept as a general manager.

1 year later, it was officially announced by Beautiful Game Studios that they had started a strategic partnership with Shanda Games. Shanda Games is a Chinese publisher company that allowed the supply of the approaching Championship Manager games in China.

#tomb raider #dues ex #Just Cause #games #gaming #retro games

Wargaming Company

Wargaming Group Limited is a video game company located in Nicosia, Cyprus. The company is a Belarusian company and is also known under the name Wargaming.net. The team works across 16 development studios and offices of which the biggest is located in Minsk. That’s the same place Wargaming originated from. Originally the company was focused on developing real-time strategy and turn-based strategy games. However, they changed their focus to creating free-to-play online games back in 2009 in which World of Tanks is included. Wargaming’s history goes back to 2 August 1998 when it was established by Victor Kislyi in Minsk with plans the company to be a strategy video game developer. In addition, Wargaming‘s first debut project was DBA Online which is a digital version of a miniature tabletop rule set called De Bellis Antiquitatis. The project was officially launched in the start of 2000.

The company began working on their first full-scale commercial project in March 2002. That project was the turn-based strategy game which we are all familiar with, Massive Assault. In 2007, the company officially announced that they bought the developer Arise that’s located in Minsk. In the end of 2008, for the first time, Wargaming published Operation Bagration which was their first real-time strategy. Few months after that, they company began working on the new project which was the game Order of War. Their first online game was World of Tanks and was officially released on 12 August 2010.

World of Tanks

World of Tanks of commonly referred to as WoT is an online multiplayer game created by Wargaming. The game features the 1930s and 1960s era of combat vehicles. The game is one of their more popular games and as a free-to-play. It’s created upon a freemium business model. That means the game is entirely free to access and play, however, users for some stuff in the game that is considered premium has to pay in order to use it. The main focus in the game is player vs. player where each of them is controlling an armored truck.

#wargaming #world of tanks #world of warplanes #world of warships #games #gaming #video games #pc games

Gotham Games

Gotham Games was a video game publisher company located in New York City. The company’s history goes back to 2002 when it was founded by Jamie Leece. The publisher was started as a subsidiary and publishing level of Take-Two Interactive officially on July 22, 2002. It was launched by the vice-president of Take-Two Interactive, Jamie Leece. He was the vice-president of business development and publishing at Take-Two. Moreover, when the subsidiary was formed he was promoted to president at Gotham Games. Moreover, that company was the third label for Take-Two Interactive. The first one was the Rockstar Games and the second Gathering of Developers. That was the reason why Take-Two finished releasing under their self-named label, quoting a “worldwide branding plan”.

Gotham Games officially announced at the May 2003 Electronic Entertainment Expo that they were looking for new video game creators who were willing to have their game published by them. The Take-Two Interactive CEO, Jeffrey Lapin, officially announced on December 18, 2003, that Gotham games had been disbanded as part of a “bigger inner re-organization”.

Games Published

Even though Gotham Games lasted only a year and few months, they published games for different platforms. We are going to talk about one particular game that caught more attention than the rest.

Serious Sam

Serious Sam is a popular video game series that’s developed by Croteam. The Gotham Games company published the first 2 games in the series for Xbox. For those who don’t know, Serious Sam is a FPS video game that’s published in 2 episodes and is the first games in the Serious Sam series. The game is originally developed for Microsoft Windows only at first. However, the rising popularity of the game resulted in porting the episodes to the PlayStation, Linux, Palm OS and Game Boy Advance and of course, the Xbox. In the upcoming episodes of the series the adventures of the main protagonist in the game Sam “Serious” Stone continues. The fight continues against the forces of the notorious extraterrestrial overlord Mental who wants to destroy the human kind forever.

#serious sam #take two interactive #games #gaming