Looking Glass Studios

Looking Glass Studios
legal form	Incorporated
founding	1990 (as Blue Sky Productions )
resolution	May 24, 2000
Reason for dissolution	Business abandonment
Seat	Lexington , Massachusetts , United States ; Cambridge , Massachusetts, United States (since 1994)
management	Paul Neurath (co-founder) ; Ned Lerner (co-founder)
Branch	Software development
Website	www.lglass.com ( Memento from June 20, 2000 in the Internet Archive )

Looking Glass Studios (originally Blue Sky Productions , later Looking Glass Technologies ) was in the 1990s, a development studio for computer games . Their games have been role models for innovative gameplay , new physical effects, and well-written and thoughtful stories. Despite good reviews, sales were meager. The best-known games included the Ultima Underworld , System Shock , Flight Unlimited and Thief series .

history

In the 1980s, the American development studio Origin Systems briefly relocated its activities from Austin (Texas) to Massachusetts , because the brother of the company's founder Richard Garriott lived there and the talent pool for qualified developers was larger. One of the hired developers was Paul Neurath , who developed the genre mix Space Rogue for Origin, among other things . The game already indicated the later priorities of Neurath and Looking Glass, the connection of role-playing elements with simulation aspects, which gave the player freedom of action and dispensed with tight guidelines for the procedure. After a while, Origin gave up its Massachusetts location and moved back to Austin, while Neurath stayed there and founded the development studio Blue Sky Productions. The company's first title was Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss , published by Origin , which was one of the pioneers of the emerging 3D computer games with its textured 3D graphics. Looking Glass was finally formed in 1992 through the merger of Blue Sky Productions with Lerner Research, a flight simulation development studio owned by Neurath's college friend Ned Lerner. The company's original headquarters were in Lexington , Massachusetts; in 1994 it moved to Cambridge , Massachusetts. Many developers have graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

In 1995, Looking Glass partnered with Viacom to develop several games. This agreement was supposed to give the company financial stability, but after 18 months the media group withdrew from the company. The self-published titles Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri (1996) and British Open Championship Golf (1997) turned out to be a financial failure, as did Flight Unlimited 3 and the critically acclaimed System Shock 2 (both 1999) developed in collaboration with Irrational Games . . One of the few financial successes, however, was Dark Project: Der Meisterdieb ( Thief , 1998). This led to a high level of debt for the company. To position itself more broadly, Looking Glass merged in 1997 with the software company Intermetrics (later Averstar) and took over porting work for the Nintendo 64 game console (including Command & Conquer: The Tiberium Conflict ). A collaboration with Nintendo on the Mini Racer game developed by Shigeru Miyamoto was never concluded for licensing reasons, and the Nintendo pillar also proved unsuccessful overall. In the meantime, the studio also had a branch in Redmond (Washington) and employed around 120 people. In 1999, Averstar separated from Looking Glass in preparation for its IPO, the studio became independent again, but still owed Averstar. A development contract with Eidos Interactive for four more games in the Thief series promised secure income. But Dark Project 2: The Metal Age already exceeded the development budget and could only be completed on the agreed date with great effort and numerous overtime. There were takeover talks with Sony and in particular Eidos, but the British publisher withdrew shortly before the negotiations were concluded for reasons that were not known. An often-voiced rumor that the failure of Eidos' first-person shooter hope Daikatana is the reason has been denied by Neurath. Since the company could not raise any new capital, Paul Neurath announced the closure of the company on May 24, 2000 at an extraordinary staff meeting.

Influence and aftermath

Looking Glass was seen in retrospect as a company that was ahead of its time, but also had a lasting influence on computer game development. On the technical side, among other things, the company took on a pioneering role. Alongside id Software , it was one of the most influential developers of the emerging 3D computer games in the 1990s, but unlike the Texan specialist in first-person shooters, it placed great emphasis on narrative aspects. Further innovation areas were the integration of complex physics systems and lighting effects calculated in real time. But the company also broke new ground in a playful way. Looking Glass game design has been characterized since Ultima Underworld by trying to create a game world that is inhabited and therefore believable. The game principle was characterized by a comparatively large freedom of action and did not take the player by the hand to make the next steps clear and to guide him through the course of the mission on precisely defined paths. Instead, it has relied on the player to make intelligent decisions to achieve the game objective. However, the products were also characterized by bulky operation in places and a high learning curve, which is why the games were mostly denied greater acceptance.

The company has had numerous renowned and influential game developers throughout its existence, including Doug Church and Austin Grossman . Matt Toschlog founded the software developer Parallax Software ( Descent ) together with Mike Kulas in 1993 . Ken Levine began his career as a game designer at Looking Glass before founding Irrational Games in 1997 with studio colleagues Jonathan Chey and Robert Fermier , which was responsible for the 1999 System Shock 2 .

After Looking Glass closed, some employees went to Ion Storm , Irrational Games , Harmonix, and Arkane Studios . Seamus Blackley developed the ambitious, but ultimately unsuccessful Jurassic Park: Trespasser for Dreamworks Interactive , before he switched to Microsoft and convinced Bill Gates to develop the first Xbox game console . Arkane Studios released Arx Fatalis, a title that was originally conceived as the successor to Ultima Underworld 2 . Ion Storm Austin, under the direction of Warren Spector ( inter alia producer of Ultima Underworld and System Shock ), later published Thief: Deadly Shadows , the third game in the Thief series, which could come up with improved graphics, but was controversial among fans of the series stayed. Long-time Looking Glass employee Randy Smith was the project manager . Deus Ex , previously published by Ion Storm , largely developed by Harvey Smith , was largely influenced by Thief . The same applies to Dishonored, developed by Smith for Arkane Studios : The Mask of Wrath . Some former Looking Glass employees have worked on games like Half-Life 2 , Emil Pagliarulo worked for Bethesda Softworks as a quest designer on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and as lead designer and writer on Fallout 3 .

Paul Neurath founded the company Floodgate Games, which u. a. for BioWare developed the expansion Neverwinter Nights: Der Schatten von Undernzit and contributed to Dark Messiah of Might & Magic , which in turn was developed by Arkane Studios. After working for Zynga , Neurath founded the Otherside Entertainment studio in 2014 and received approval from Electronic Arts to develop a successor to Ultima Underworld in terms of content , which, however, had to do without the Ultima addition. Ultima Ascendant was funded in 2015 through a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign .

A special feature of Looking Glass titles is the recurring number 451. It is based on the dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury , in which it alludes to the temperature at which the author imagines that paper ignites itself. The number was first introduced in System Shock used as a door code in System Shock 2 she appeared as modified 45100 again. In the variant 0451, it found its way into games by former Looking Glass employees such as Deus Ex and Bioshock , but also as a reminiscence of other developers in games such as Gone Home .