Ex-Relic Staff Form Smoking Gun Interactive

June 4, 2007 8:21 AM

As teased last week, three former Relic Entertainment employees have announced the formation of their own development studio, Smoking Gun Interactive. Acting as Smoking Gun's CEO and creative director is Company of Heroes producer and Relic's previous director of development, John Johnson. Homeworld programmer and Company of Heroes lead programmer Drew Dunlop fulfills the duties of CTO and technical director, with Company of Heroes art director Angie Radwan-Pytlewski taking on the responsibilities of CCO and art director.

Joining the founding trio at Smoking Gun Interactive are a number of previous Company of Heroes staff, including story and script writer Duane Pye and audio director Crispin Hands. As Smoking Gun boasted in its teaser campaign last week, aggregate site Game Rankings lists Relic Entertainment's Company of Heroes as the highest rated real-time strategy game on the PC.

According to today's announcement, Smoking Gun Interactive plans to focus on "innovative award winning cross platform games based on original or company owned intellectual property." Based off the developer's heritage, it is assumed these games will be of the real-time strategy variety.

"The team at Smoking Gun has worked passionately together for over 7 years, building teams that have created the most critically acclaimed games in their genre," noted Johnson. "As the industry evolves so do the ways that people interact with video games. With our collective input Smoking Gun will be at the forefront of producing innovative best-selling titles, that really push the envelop further than we've gone before."

Chris Faylor

Chris Faylor was previously a games journalist creating content at Shacknews.

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Relic Entertainment

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[deleted] 920691170

 reply
June 4, 2007 8:35 AM

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- Sturm08
  
   reply
  June 4, 2007 8:51 AM
  
  They almost have to be. The cost of development requires cross platform strategy.
  
  That's the least of my worries.
  - Sylvanus
    
     reply
    June 4, 2007 9:21 AM
    
    Exactly. Best to them. Anything else would be short-sighted and there'd be a greater possibility of being gone towards or after their 1st release. It is a business. Work with caution for longevity's sake; especially if you have a solid core as they do. Multi-Platform development has it's considerations, that's all. People shouldn't whine about it.
- cannelbrae
  
   reply
  June 4, 2007 8:53 AM
  
  Starting a new studio these days is extremely hard; even if you migrate a whole team. Publishers view it as a huge risk.
  
  Making PC only titles minimizes the potential payoff to the publisher for the risk they accept. Given PC and console sales numbers these days, crossplatform is almost required to make financially viable high-end-content games.
- code-e255
  
   reply
  June 4, 2007 9:03 AM
  
  I smell gimped, console-friendly RTS games a la C&C3 incoming... :/
  - Sturm08
    
     reply
    June 4, 2007 9:57 AM
    
    I thought C&C 3 was a good PC game. And if console RTS games give us more stuff that is (if it actually turns out as good as it looks) as cool as EndWar, bring it on.
- aeg1x
  
   reply
  June 4, 2007 7:24 PM
  
  I thought exactly the same thing. Blech.