SGW Announcements

From Stargate Worlds Wiki (SGW)

[edit] CME Licences Epic's Unreal3 Engine Technology

By Khatie - Aug 28, 2006

MESA, Ariz., August 28, 2006 — Game developer Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment (CME), and Epic Games today announced a license agreement in which CME will use Epic's Unreal® Engine 3 technology for the development of the upcoming, highly anticipated Stargate Worlds and future multi-platform games.

Based on the popular science fiction television series "Stargate: SG-1" and "Stargate Atlantis," Stargate Worlds is a Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) which is scheduled to launch in late 2007.

"The combination of a robust graphics environment with extensible development tools allows us to deliver ground-breaking game content for Stargate Worlds commensurate with the quality of the #1 rated sci-fi franchise and future multi-platform games," said Joe Ybarra, vice president of product development for Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment. "Our development team is very excited about using the Unreal Engine 3."

"MGM is committed to finding ways to extend the Stargate franchise and this is a logical step," said Travis Rutherford, executive vice president, MGM Consumer Products and Location Based Entertainment. "Stargate Worlds will be the premier Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG) developed by CME. Combining Unreal Engine 3 technology with Big World's™ client server technology ensures an exceptional MMO experience for Stargate fans and gamers on a global basis. Furthermore, these partnerships will maximize CME's resources and efforts, allowing the developer to create the most fantastic worlds, the best characters and the most compelling game play possible."

"Combining these technologies (Unreal® Engine 3 and Big World™) provides Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment the strategic advantage to deliver highly anticipated, top quality games where the focus is on making great gameplay and immersive worlds," added Tim Jenson, chief executive officer of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment.

"We have a lot of Stargate fans around our company, so we're thrilled to see that Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment is creating a massive multi-player game based on Stargate," said Mark Rein, vice president, Epic Games Inc. "To have that MMO created using Unreal® Engine 3 extends the excitement even further for us."

"BigWorld looks forward to working with Epic and Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment to enable the exciting goals of Stargate Worlds. Our highly available secure server architecture is the perfect companion to the Unreal 3 client engine." said Gavin Longhurst, director of business development for BigWorld.

Officially licensed by MGM Interactive, Stargate Worlds is being developed by Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment.

[edit] Stargate Worlds' Most Anticipated

By: Khatie on August 4^th, 2006: Stargate Worlds' Most Anticipated

From: "Loading..." the Blog of Ten Ton Hammer's C.O.O John "Boomjack" Hoskin:

"There are some fantastic MMOGs in development. My Top 10 list would go something like this, ranked by what I would like to play today.

10) Hero's Journey

9) Star Trek Online

8) WoW: Burning Crusade

7) Pirates of the Burning Sea

6) Lord of the Rings Online

5) Age of Conan

4) Vanguard: Saga of Heroes

3) Gods and Heroes

2) Warhammer Online

1) Stargate Worlds!!!

[edit] Stargate World's First Official Award

By: Khatie on May 27^th, 2006: Stargate Worlds' First Official Award

"This year, Ten Ton Hammer gave out awards at E3. Stargate Worlds took home the "Most Anticipated MMO" Award! Congratulations, Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment!

[edit] From Ten Ton Hammer:

"Think of the longest-running sci-fi television series and you're likely to blurt out "Star Trek: TNG." Nope, Stargate SG-1 has outlasted Picard and the rest of the "Next Generation" cast by three seasons- spawning one, possibly two, successful spinoffs - and is still going strong. Small wonder that Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment picked up the Stargate license plus a small army of proven developer talent for its freshman MMO effort.

"The universe according to Stargate offers a host of MMO-friendly motifs and mechanics, the intricate storyline and faction system, quick-travel mechanic, and squad-based combat to name three. It's no wonder gamers worldwide are jazzed about SGW, even though the game's still a good two years away."

[edit] Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment Selects BigWorld Technology Suite

By: Khatie on March 3^rd, 2006: Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment Selects BigWorld Technology Suite

"Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment, a rising game development company, today announced that they have chosen the BigWorld Technology Suite as the platform for their ground-breaking new MMORPG, Stargate Worlds. This officially licensed MGM property is the first massively multiplayer game based on the Stargate series, and promises to deliver all of the SG-1 & Atlantis exploration, conflict and excitement to players around the world.

"We evaluated many client server solutions to aid us in creating a truly breakthrough next-generation MMO", said Joe Ybarra, Vice President of Product Development at Cheyenne Mountain. "But by far the best overall solution for us is BigWorld's powerful client/server engine and streamlined production toolset. We are excited to be teaming up with them on this project."

The BigWorld Technology Suite is an integrated set of tools, software and systems that provides all of the underlying technology and content development tools required to produce an MMOG. "The Stargate universe has evolved to be one of the most recognized Sci-fi brands in recent times," said Gavin Longhurst, Director of Business Development for BigWorld, "We are thrilled to see such an experienced and talented team as Cheyenne Mountain using BigWorld Technology to bring this visually stunning universe into the highly interactive, compelling online experience that fans and gamers want".

BigWorld Technology Suite provides operators and studios with a lower total time-to-build and cost of ownership through several innovations. The BigWorld Server architecture allows operators to run several games on a single server cluster, dramatically reducing the cost of running the game, while the enhanced Content Creation Pipeline reduces the time and cost of building and filling out the complex worlds required in next-generation games.

[edit] About BigWorld Pty Ltd and the BigWorld Technology Suite

Comprised of the BigWorld Server Software, Content Creation Pipeline, 3D Client Engine Package, Live Management Tools & Instrumentation, BigWorld Technology Suite is the only complete MMOG solution, providing all of the difficult to produce technology required to produce an engaging next-generation MMOG.

BigWorld Pty Ltd was formed in 2002 to commercialize years of intense R&D, which started in 1999 and continues to this day. BigWorld Pty Ltd is a privately held company based in Australia that licenses its BigWorld Technology Suite middleware platform to game studios and publishers around the world that are looking to produce successful next generation Massively Multiplayer Online Games. www.bigworldtech.com

[edit] About Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment^TM

Cheyenne Mountain EntertainmentTM was founded with the goal of becoming a leading developer of entertainment software products. Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment's first product is an MMO-RPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) based on the popular science fiction television series, StargateTM SG-1 and StargateTM Atlantis. For more info on the company, visit the company's website at www.cheyenneme.com. For more info on Stargate Worlds, visit the new community site at www.stargateworlds.com

[edit] Press Contact for BigWorld

Maretta Buckley

Marketing Assistant

Phone: +61-2 6162 5120

press@bigworldtech.com

[edit] Press Contact for Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment

Sara Baker

Marketing Director

(480) 281-1882

sbaker@cheyenneme.com"

[edit] Cheyenne Mountain Holds Press Junket

By: Khatie on February 22^nd, 2006: Cheyenne Mountain Holds Press Junket

[edit] COMPANY INTRO

By Timothy Jenson, President and CEO

Let me start off with maybe a little bit of history about our company. About four years ago some avid game enthusiasts and some excited fans of Stargate, namely Jim Brown, Todd Ellering and Daryl Wofford had an idea to create an MMORPG based upon the Stargate story line. Since MGM is the owner of the Stargate property the first critical task for them was to convince MGM of the potential value of that idea. The three of them created a preliminary design and a business plan and after some extensive series of meetings, interviews and presentations, they convinced MGM to consider moving forward with the licensing arrangement. The next step and a key requirement of MGM was to find the necessary capital to get the project off the drawing board and into production. This proved harder than expected. Finally in the summer of 2005 the project was jump-started by a Mesa, Arizona based entrepreneur and visionary business man by the name of Gary Whiting.

After his careful review of the initial proposal and business plan, Mr. Whiting formed and arranged for the funding of Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment. In July 2005 Cheyenne obtained from the initial three creators all the rights and intellectual property associated with Stargate Worlds and officially began to do business.

From the beginning the company's goal was to find the best and the brightest people in the game industry and to build a truly great game with exceptional graphics and superior gaming experience. The first key position sought by the company was an industry leader, an expert in game development and particularly someone with MMO expertise. The company's search successfully attracted a true industry legend, Joe Ybarra, who joined the Cheyenne team in July 2005. Joe quickly saw the possibilities for a Stargate MMO and realized the opportunity to build a truly world-class development studio. With Joe's game development experience on board the next key position to be filled was for a business leader who could organize the administrative functions of the company so that Joe could focus on building world-class entertainment products.

In August of 2005 the company asked that I join the Cheyenne team to give Joe the support he needed not only to make Stargate Worlds a great success but to position us to become a premier entertainment company.

Our first public announcement was on January 31, 2006, and was the culmination of the work that had been in creation for nearly four years. Now in full swing, Cheyenne has a growing staff of top industry veterans and is poised to deliver well beyond the dream begun by the three original creators. Cheyenne is now rapidly becoming the leading developer of interactive entertainer software products. The company is dedicated to creating cutting edge unique entertainment. The company expects to develop highly recognizable brands with high quality technology, distinctive artwork and rich game play. Cheyenne continues to recruit top industry talent to ensure its success as a game development company.

[edit] STARGATE WORLDS INTRO

By Joe Ybarra, Vice President of Product Development

One of the things I will begin this conversation by saying is the fact that we are currently still in preproduction of our product. Part of our strategy as far as the preproduction cycle is concerned is to try to get some of our customers involved, which is the reason why we have launched our forum site already a couple of weeks ago. Very shortly we will be launching the community site for Stargate Worlds. We plan on continuously updating the community site and the forums with information about our product, as we evolve the details of the design, and as we are able to share more and more information about what our plans are.

I think we will begin by talking about, what are the elements about Stargate that are particularly attractive from an MMO perspective? I think the most obvious one is the concept of the Stargate itself. The Stargate, as we know from the TV series, provides us with a vehicle that allows us to basically transport our players anywhere in the universe. By anywhere, we mean any obvious planet surface, in outer space, inside interiors of space craft or ancient ruins or various other locations. It is a perfect vehicle for us to be able to transport people and it gives them a sense of awe and exploration.

Starting off with the game environment, we have the opportunity to transport people anywhere in the universe, we plan on taking great advantage of that. This implies of course that there will be a fair degree of use of instances in our game. By the same token, there will also be very large scale wide open play environments that people will be able to play in. One of the components that we are really focusing in on heavily in this game is to find areas of play for the users that are not directly combat related. So because we will need a lot of playfield area in which to enact that, this is an area that we are focusing a lot of attention on. At the same time we also really want to capture the feel of science fiction, so we do plan on having quite a bit of content that is related to alien civilization both extinct as well as current.

We have lots of alien races and different types of possibilities, for what players might be represented by. The most obvious of course is the Jafa as one of the game characters in SG1. It is not a human so we would expect that the players would be able to play Jaffa and various other non-human races. They are still investigating the possibility of which kinds of races we would like the users to be represented by. We have some pretty interesting ideas in that area, so stay tuned as we get more details out on that. Again, we will be concentrating on making sure we have lots of different races.

We want to have an environment in which the users can do things that are not combat and have a very rich and compelling game experience. So to that extent we are designing a very elaborate construction system for allowing players to construct different housing, different activities on planet side.

For instance one of the things that we have discussed is the idea of constructing a mine so that you have a mining facility and refinery that allows the users to process the raw ore and turn it into something that is usable as a commodity. That is just one example of constructions. We also have the opportunity to have an elaborate tech tree. And the tech tree gets into the idea that we have several advanced alien races such as the Asgard. They have a very rich and detailed technology base that we can allow users to explore and, if you will, level up in their skills and the knowledge base about that type of technology.

Lastly, trading. We think it is really important that we support the free economy, if you will, and allow players to trade freely between each other between planets as well as smuggle when we try to move contraband from say the Goa'uld technology base into the Asgard's technology base.

Having said that, I will speak about combat now because combat is going to be the biggest percentage of play activity, as is in any MMO. In our game design we will be supporting four-player squads. For solo players, if it turns out that you cannot find or you don't wish to fight with a whole bunch of other people then we will provide you with AI-driven bots that will support you in various different missions and activities.

Combat in our game is going to be very modern, as it is in the TV series, so the users will be equipped with P90 machine guns as well as shot guns, as well as other types of modern equipment including explosives like hand grenades and C4 explosives and what-not. We also are putting a high premium on stealth, using the terrain and other things for cover so that users are not going to be exposed to machine gun fire or other things.

The last thing I would like to talk about is, about our structures for social aspects of the game. MMOs are really about communities of people and because they are about communities of people we feel that one of the areas that we could do some innovative work is to really try to make the guild systems and the squad systems and all of the hierarchies in-between a very compelling play experience for the user. So to that extent our plans are to try to work with guild leaders and other people who do these things on an ongoing basis to find out what kind of tools they need to help organize their guilds.

We also plan on having play activities that are related specifically to guilds. One of the big concepts that we have been discussing has been a guild leveling system. The guild itself actually generates through the course of its members various points or the equivalent of experience points so the guild itself is progressing. As a result of the guild progressing, it will unlock construction capabilities, expansion capabilities, technological abilities as well as the obvious economic benefits.