Croteam in a Nutshell

So Serious Sam is fun, and we all know it's by a Croatian studio called Croteam. However, compared to most of the other well-known first person shooter developers out there, it doesn't seem like as many people are really familiar with the history of Croteam. Well, Allen Varney wants to change that, so here's Serious Cro, a timeline of the studio's history filled with a bunch of interesting facts that I, at least, didn't know.

Because they couldn't afford to license an existing engine, Croteam had to write one themselves--the "Serious Engine." Its first public Technology Test in 2000 impressed Erik Wolpaw of the acidulous humor site Old Man Murray (OMM): "It's an amazing piece of work by a tiny group living in a country most people thought had been blown up a few years ago. [...] It's just the kind of uplifting, underdogs-struggling- against-impossible-odds success story that could only happen in America or Croatia."

The article touches on the game development environment in Croatia--which, apparently, suffers not for lack of talent but for lack of financing. The Balkan region in its entirety only sports a dozen professional game developer. Varney finishes up the article speaking a bit about the implications of globalization on the games community. It's worth checking out! (Seriously!) (Get it?)