An Analysis of The Behemoth.

The Behemoth is an “Indie” Video game development company that was created and founded in 2002, John Baez, Lead Artist Dan Paladin (More commonly known as his former username “Synj”) and Tom Fulp (The creator of the popular community flash based website Newgrounds).

Behemoth have a development studio despite the team’s small size of just 14 members located in San Diego, California. The style of games they produce stick to the classic and simplistic roots of gaming.

Their  first console game, Alien Hominid, started off as an incredibly popular Flash game found on the internet. The game had a attractive look that made it look like a moving stylised illustration/cartoon. The characters and style that Dan Paladin used to portray the characters were attractive and easily likeable.  Accompanied with impressive, humorous and smooth animation, I believe these two facts were the main attraction and focal point of the game.

In 2004, Alien Hominid was reformatted, rebuilt and released onto the mainstream gaming industry as a title for the current generation consoles. It featured many extra options like new modes, cooperative play and an extended story with more levels.  The game was considered a success and stood out from the other games in it’s genre. It was later released in HD for the Xbox 360 Arcade.

It would be another 4  years until another release from Behemoth, and in 2008, it was in the form of Castle Crashers. Again done Dan Paladin’s signature 2D style but implementing a much more impressive array of animation and gameplay, yet keeping to it’s retro-esque roots. The game was only released on Xbox Live Arcade but went on to become of the most downloaded games in the history of Xbox Live receiving praising reviews  with over 1,000,000 players logged on their leaderboards.

Another title, BattleBlock Theater is currently in development as keeping to the Developers unique trait, it’s sticking with Paladin’s art style.

 

The Behemoth and a lot of other Indie Developers are very different to other AAA blockbuster title developing companies. Like Bungies who have a routine weekly update to their games, vast amounts of trailers and coverage of the stages of delopement until its release as well as a vast amount of freedom with their marketing and advertising with a large budget and funding to support it.
Also showing video documentaries interviewing the employees as they discuss the game in works.

Whilst The Behemoth maybe release one trailer or  two of the game, have a small blog releasing bits of information written by maybe the lead designer, etc.  Whilst little to none advertising to support its release. And when a game is delivered in that way to the public I believe that when it then start to receive rave reviews, it shows that it really deserves it in a sence of that there has been no hype leading on the image of that the advertiser were trying to achieve.

Below is a very impressively portrayed Timeline showing the history of The Behmoth illustrated by Dan Paladin.

References:
http://www.thebehemoth.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Behemoth
http://www.thebehemoth.com/faq.html

An Analysis of Bungie.

Bungie was first founded as Bungie Software Products Corporation in 1991 by the University of Chicago student Alex Seropian, The small team developed quickly and they eventually brought out a Pong clone called Gnop!  This was the start of their publishing chain.

In its early years Bungie focused their attention in games to the Macintosh systems producing the popular Marathon and Myth series. But in 2000 Bungie was acquired by Microsoft and in gaining the interactive developers they also had gained their then-current project which had been initially design for Macintosh.

A first person shooter called Halo: Combat Evolved which was converted and rebuilt for Microsoft’s new Xbox console. This asset they had inherited went on to become Xbox’s “killer title” going on to sell millions of copies and creating a billion dollar franchise that has spawn a series of games, merchandise and an in-works film.

October 5^th 2007 was the day that Bungie announced that they had decided to detach from Microsoft and become a privately held independent company.  In the same year the company had signed onto a ten-year publishing deal with Activision Blizzard the American holding company for Activision and Blizzard Entertainment.

Before the Halo Franchise Bungie had developed a small list of games, once they had struck upon the large fortune and popularity that Halo had gotten, Microsoft had Bungie continue the series until they had detatched from them.  From 2001 to 2010 they had worked on projects completely on the Halo franchise, which hard sparked harsh criticism against them. Only until recently have Bungie revealed that they are working on multiple projects with partners and a unknown new IP, even with rumours still circulating on Bungie still working on creating new additions (and remakes) to the Halo franchise.

Bungie is well known for its in-formal workplace, allowing employee’s to get comfortable and become more appreciative and dedicated to the company with its workplace culture. Bungie usually displays this on their website’s daily updates and ViDocs showing their work environment and attitude towards work

Some members of the company like to show their humor a lot in their public relations by abiding with sharing public messages so much so that you can almost always expect an April Fools message from Bungie every year.  If they are not showing this through their website or other means they like to keep their mythologies and “inside” references that they have kept going over the years. Like their “Bungie's 7-Step Plan for World Domination.” and unhealthy obsession with the number 7.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bungie

http://www.bungie.net/

http://www.bungie.net/Inside/aboutus.aspx