Monolith Productions

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Monolith Productions

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 1994
Seat Kirkland , Washington
Branch Game software
Website Monolith Productions, Inc.

Monolith Productions, Inc. is an American developer of computer games based in Kirkland , Washington .

history

Monolith was founded in October 1994 by Jason "Jace" Hall (born May 20, 1971), who was CEO and producer in the studio for years . Along with id Software, Monolith Productions was a pioneer in the field of 3D graphics engines in the 1990s . The engine called LithTech aroused a lot of attention from Microsoft and was initially intended to serve as the basis for the DirectX graphics interface . When this collaboration with Microsoft did not materialize, Monolith developed LithTech independently.

LithTech was first used in the first person shooter Shogo: Mobile Armor Division and was further developed up to version 2.5. The subsidiary Touchdown Entertainment is currently developing the engine further and is licensing it to other developers for use in their projects. The engine can now be licensed under the name Jupiter .

Monolith is only limited to the development of games. Their 2005 project FEAR uses the last improved version, the Jupiter EX , which has integrated the Havok physics engine and supports the latest DirectX 9 effects, but only provides multiplayer support for 16 players.

All of these effects and possibilities have been improved and expanded in their latest game Condemned: Criminal Origins . In autumn 2007 the development of Condemned 2: Bloodshot , the successor to Condemned, was officially announced.

In 2004 the company was taken over by Warner Bros. and currently employs 100 people in Kirkland. The Warner Bros. Interactive founded for this purpose is to develop computer games for motion pictures. A first step in this direction was the release of The Matrix Online in spring 2005 , which was soon to be followed by a game version of Batman Begins .

In 2013, several former Monolith employees (including No One Lives Forever designer Craig Hubbard) founded the independent development studio Blackpowder Games.

Games

In the first few years, Monolith's activities included the development of its own products and the sale of games from external manufacturers. The company was later reorganized and finally concentrated only on developing its own titles. While in the first few years the company sold its own titles, this area was later left to other companies. These partners are and were among others Sega , Sierra Entertainment / Vivendi Universal Games , Disney Interactive / Buena Vista Games , Fox Interactive , GT Interactive and Microsoft .

While initially different genres were tried, in development as well as in sales, Monolith exclusively developed so-called first person shooters from 2000 onwards . Only after the purchase by Warner Bros. Entertainment was an MMORPG on the plan for the first time , but it received relatively poor reviews.

Most recently, Monolith worked on the action adventure Middle-earth: Mordor's Shadow , set in the Lord of the Rings universe , which was released in the second quarter of 2014 for Windows and all common game consoles (except Nintendo ).

First person shooter

Massive multiplayer online roleplaying game

Action adventure

Adventure

strategy

puzzle

features

Typical of Monolith games are built-in references to previous titles from the studio. In the titles Blood 2 , No One Lives Forever and games in the FEAR series , you can find allusions to Shogo: Mobile Armor Division , such as B. Posters or a character in FEAR 2 wearing a T-shirt with a Shogo print. Also significant is the idiosyncratic humor of the developer, which can be found in the games Blood , No One Lives Forever and Gotham City Impostors . However, the developer's shooters are also known for their high level of violence, which is why many games were only censored in Germany. The original versions of the horror shooters FEAR and FEAR 2 were indexed by the BPjS before the release . The early work Blood is on the index. The survival horror titles Condemned: Criminal Origins and Condemned 2 were not published in Germany and were confiscated nationwide by the Munich District Court .

The works of Monolith Productions are generally rated positively by the trade press. No One Lives Forever received excellent reviews at the time. The shooter FEAR was showered with praise at the time of release due to the graphics, atmosphere and the benchmark AI. Contract JACK and The Matrix Online were less well received .

Web links