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Print Edition StoriesTuesday, March 9, 2010
38 Studios strikes a deal with EA to publish Project Mercury
By Rodney H. Brown
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38 Studios LLC, the Maynard video game development company established by Curt Schilling, will be launching a sort of preview game set in the same background world as its planned massively multiplayer online role-playing game, currently called Copernicus. That game, called Project Mercury, has signed on industry titan Electronic Arts Inc. as a publisher.
The game is being developed by 38 Studios’ Maryland subsidiary Big Huge Games, which it acquired in May of 2009 for an undisclosed amount. Big Huge had developed technology that would allow for the easy creation of a single-player role-playing game from almost any intellectual property, such as an MMO. According to 38 Studios CEO Jennifer MacLean, that is exactly what they are doing with Project Mercury.
“We were able to take the story line that Todd McFarlane and R.A. Salvatore had created and combine it with the creative elements that the team in Maynard had developed, in terms of how the world looks, what the races look like and the feel of the world, and map that onto the technology that Big Huge Games had already developed,” MacLean said. “So we took sort of the backbone of the RPG they had been working on, fleshed it out with all of the creative elements that the team in Maynard and Todd and R.A. had done, and were able to essentially leapfrog the normal development process.”
Schilling, who founded 38 Studios along with fantasy author Salvatore and comic book creator McFarlane, said in a statement that the deal with EA for the company’s very first product was “a dream come true.”
EA, based in California, listed revenue of $4.2 billion for 2009 and had 31 titles last year that sold more than one million copies, officials said. Project Mercury is planned to launch in versions for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles, and for the PC. MacLean declined to talk about any possible release date.
Last week, 38 Studios named a new chief financial officer, Rick Wester, and a new chief marketing officer, Denise Kaigler.
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