Danger Close (Company)

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Danger Close

logo
legal form Limited Liability Company
founding 1995 (as DreamWorks Interactive)
resolution 2013
Reason for dissolution Dissolution by the parent company
Seat Los Angeles , United StatesUnited StatesUnited States 
Branch Software development
Website dangerclosegames.com ( Memento of May 11, 2013 in the Internet Archive )

Danger Close (formerly DreamWorks Interactive LLC and EA Los Angeles ) was an American development studio and former publisher based in Bel Air , California .

history

Foundation as DreamWorks Interactive

Founded in March 1995 as a Limited Liability Company , Microsoft was a joint venture between Microsoft and DreamWorks SKG , an entertainment company founded by Steven Spielberg , Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen . The cooperation negotiations were led by the then Senior Vice President at Microsoft and consultant at DreamWorks SKG, Patty Stonesifer , who then became CEO of the new company. Both business partners each held a 50 percent stake in the company, which at the time was worth a total of 30 million US dollars.

DreamWorks Interactive concentrated on games for well-known media productions, such as the goosebumps books by RL Stine or the Jurassic Park cinema series (e.g. Trespasser ). According to DreamWorks, the developments should be characterized by "film-like production, actions and character representations" . DreamWorks followed the trend of the big Hollywood studios at the time to found their own entertainment software companies in order to further market their successful film licenses. The publisher for the DreamWorks games was Electronic Arts since 1998 .

Among her greatest achievements of the part World War II playing first-person shooter Medal of Honor . However, other games such as the first-person shooter Trespasser or Lost World: Jurassic Park could not convince critics and potential buyers. Contrary to the original ideas of the founders, DreamWorks Interactive was unable to earn a place among the top developers and also fell short of expectations economically. Finally, DreamWorks SKG decided to sell the development company - just like the music publisher DreamWorks Music .

Takeover by Electronic Arts

In 2000, Electronic Arts took over the company, adding not only another development studio to its growing development team, but also the successful Medal of Honor series to its portfolio of titles . At the time of the change of ownership, around 100 employees worked under the direction of Managing Director Glenn Entis in the DreamWorks studio in Bel Air. In 2003, Electronic Arts merged DreamWorks Interactive and the development studios EA Pacific and Westwood Studios to EA Los Angeles. In addition to the Medal of Honor , EA Los Angeles was also responsible for the real-time strategy series Command & Conquer .

In 2009, Electronic Arts announced that they were resigning from numerous employees across the Group. In this context, it was also announced to the development team of the C&C series that all team members would be fired after work on Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight was finished. At the end of July 2010 it was announced that Electronic Arts had renamed the Los Angeles studio to Danger Close. The group had already taken a similar step with the renaming of EA Redwood Shores in Visceral Games . Responsibility for Command & Conquer was transferred to the newly founded studio Victory Games in 2011 with the launch of the free-to-play game Command & Conquer , originally announced as Command & Conquer: Generals 2 , whose game was discontinued before it was released.

On June 13, 2013, it was announced that Danger Close was disbanded due to the disappointing reviews and sales of Medal of Honor: Warfighter . Parts of the workforce were accommodated in the newly established DICE LA developer studio .

Ludography

Publisher

  • The Neverhood (1996, developed by The Neverhood, Inc.)
  • Goosebumps: Escape from Horrorland (1996, in-house development)
  • Dilbert 's Desktop Games (1997, developed by Cyclops Software)
  • Chaos Island (1997, in-house development)
  • Goosebumps: Attack of the Mutant (1997, in-house development)
  • SkullMonkeys (1998)
  • Trespasser (1998, in-house development)
  • Warpath: Jurassic Park (1999, developed by Black Ops Entertainment )

developer

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kathy Rebello: After Win95, what do you do for an encore? . BusinessWeek , October 16, 1995.
  2. ^ Greg Spring: DreamWorks attracts two new big names - DreamWorks SKG; Microsoft CEO Bill Gates; Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen . Los Angeles Business Journal. March 27, 1995.
  3. ^ Sara Fisher: DreamWorks Interactive, Electronic Arts Eyeing Deal . Los Angeles Business Journal. January 10, 2000.
  4. ^ Rob Fahey: EA consolidates in new LA campus . Gamesindustry.biz / Eurogamer.net. January 30, 2003.
  5. ↑ http://www.pcgames.de/Electronic-Arts-Firma-15412/News/Electronic-Arts-Massive-Entlassung-beim-Command-und-Conquer-Team-geplant-699222/
  6. ↑ Alec Meer: Medal of Honor studio becomes 'Danger Close' . GamesIndustry.biz. July 23, 2010.
  7. ^ Greg Miller: BioWare's New Game: Command & Conquer: Generals 2 . IGN . December 10, 2011. Retrieved August 5, 2012.
  8. ^ Christian Weigel: Command & Conquer - development stopped. GameStar .de, October 30, 2013, accessed October 30, 2013 .
  9. ↑ http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-06-13-star-wars-battlefront-is-dices-interpretation-of-what-battlefront-should-be