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MumboJumbo Acquires Ritual Entertainment
by Maarten Goldstein, Jan 24, 2007 12:32pm PSTWe just received this press release, announcing that casual game company MumboJumbo has acquired SiN developer Ritual Entertainment. From the look of things, Ritual will now be focusing on casual games as well. Dallas, TX based Ritual saw several departures early last month.
"MumboJumbo established the casual games category at retail, and the purchase of Ritual Entertainment is consistent with our strategy to bring high-quality casual game content to the major platforms," said Ron Dimant, who left his post as chief executive officer of Ritual Entertainment in 2001 to found MumboJumbo. "The combination of Ritual's high-end, multi-platform expertise and our own industry-leading publishing model will set the bar for quality and sophistication in casual games and create a major industry powerhouse. The casual games market is beginning to mature as evidenced by an increase in consumer expectations. Ultimately, the companies providing the best content will win, which is why we are investing so heavily in the development of technology and original IP."
Comments
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I bought SiN: EP1 just to support those homose and this is how they repay me?
>:(
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if a company is good at developing a certain type of product, what point is it to buy them out and then have them work on somthing else alltogether? why spend the money?
thatd be like if AMD bought out ATI but then had them work on network cards instead of graphics chips...what would be the point??
If they wanted to develop casual games, why not buy out a company that already makes casual games?
I dont get it :<
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Good luck in your new gamespace gents.
Same goes for Tom (Mustaine, director of Severity), too, that project is going to be fucking perfect for him and I hope the game is fun. If someone has asked me "Hey, what kinda game should Tom make?" I would have said "Competitive fast paced First Person Shooter". Awesome.
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The impression I got was that Myth III bombed so badly that they couldn't afford to keep the team employed, and went into the casual games market, having effectively failed in the serious games market. This paragraph is just an 'impression,' however.
Interestingly when they made people redundant, the lead programmer of Myth III, Andrew Meggs, surfaced at Troika as the lead programmer on Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. This is the same guy who ported Half-Life for the Mac, got it as far as alpha, playable online against PC versions of the game, before Valve cancelled it. That poor guy has had the worst luck. I'm not sure what happened to him after Troika.
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Casual games are pretty sweet with a massive market which stands to make a crapton of money, but it still seems a tad odd to me.
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That can't work out, can it?
Well, it can and probably will for the benefit of both. Here's how:
Ritual and Mumbo Jumbo are in the same building, in fact, across the hall from each other.
Second, a lot of the guys at Ritual have been experimenting with smaller games that can be made in a weekend. This isn't top secret info, it's all public, just gotta put the pieces together. Some guys at Ritual gave presentations at GDC talking about their "Game Jam" sessions. These are 24/48 hr crunches where they attempt to make a small game in one weekend. Slowly, they've been getting more and more experience at this and have created some really cool games in the process and showed off some of them at GDC. So, this move by Ritual and Mumbo Jumbo isn't as weird as it seems on the surface. I'm excited to see what happens and wish them luck.
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Mustaine is working on the new CPL game Severity, and I wonder if Levelord will be moving on or just retiring?
Oh well.
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rip ritual. you made amazing tits
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There's an awesome story here we'll never find out. Shit like this always has some awesome story.
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...Casual games?! WHY!
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What a lot of posters here are missing is that a lot of people in the traditional game development industry (big games, years of development, lots and lots of money needed) want to get the hell out of that treadmill but still make games. This is one possible way.
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