Here's something new that some of you might find interesting. It's a short history about Swingin' Ape Studios, including some information that no one outside of SAS or Blizzard knows about. I've also collected some exclusive information and never before seen images of an unreleased title. I hope you find it as interesting as I did, especially if you were a big fan of Metal Arms (like I am.)

During the course of my investigation, I actually ended up breaking out my XBOX from storage and I'll be playing Metal Arms later tonight. :)

Now.. as many of you know, Blizzard had outsourced the Starcraft Ghost project to Nihilistic and they ended their relationship in mid 2004. The project was then contracted to Swingin' Ape Studios, which was later acquired by Blizzard in May 2005.

According to official documents, Blizzard acquired Swingin' Ape Studios, and Vivendi acquired several other studios around the same time. They paid approximately $71.6 million for all of the acquisitions. (Detailed breakdowns are not publicly available of course.)

The subject of Starcraft Ghost has been talked about so much, it's like beating a dead horse, and you know that those are subjects that I try to avoid. :)

I'm actually surprised that no one has ever focused on Swingin' Ape Studios themselves. It seems that the focus has always been on Ghost, but never on it's other games or the company itself.

The Original Metal Arms

I wanted to start out with a quick description of what SAS originally brainstormed for Metal Arms. This has been brought up in past interviews, but I thought I would re-post because it's very interesting and often overlooked.

Metal Arms: Glitch in the System is Swingin' Ape Studios's first game development project. How did the title come to be? Did Vivendi request your development services, or was this a project that Swingin' Ape Studios took to Vivendi for publishing?

Steve Ranck: In early 2001, Swingin’ Ape Studios was working on a game concept based on a space traveling bounty hunter. We had a rich story, interesting characters, and exciting planets the player could visit. One of these planets was called Iron Star, and it was inhabited entirely by various types of robots. When we learned that two other bounty hunter games were already far into development, we dropped the idea and began experimenting with a game based on the robot world of Iron Star. We replaced the biological bounty hunter character with Glitch, our small but determined robot protagonist. With our robot universe providing a creative springboard, our design document quickly grew to over 200 pages and from there it was easy to develop a playable prototype using a few of the more exciting ideas. At the same time, we were speaking with many publishers about Metal Arms and eventually signed with Vivendi who really understood the potential of the game.

Steve Ranck also posted some fun facts about Metal Arms here back in 2004.

For example,

The initial design for Metal Arms revolved around RTS-style mechanics. Obviously we lost the RTS elements as the game design evolved.

Swingin' Ape pitched the Metal Arms concept to over 12 publishers at E3 2001. Sierra was one of them. The pitch included a design overview, concept art, and the demo movie that you can view in the shipping product after you beat the game.

Swingin' Ape surprised Sierra with a playable demo several months before Sierra decided to fund the game. It demonstrated the various gameplay modes, including the ability to take over and control a Titan.

Other Games After Metal Arms, But Before Ghost

After the Metal Arms project finished, the company pitched several game ideas to various companies before landing the SC Ghost project.

The team worked on Metal Arms 2, a SWAT demo for the PS2, a GI Joe demo, and a game called "Guerrilla: Jungle Revolt" for the X360. The Guerrilla demo actually started out as a Wasteland / Mad Max / post-apocalyptic themed game, but when they showed it to EA, they thought that something more military themed (on an island like Far Cry), would sell better so they encouraged SAS to re-theme and update the proposed design. The new design was pitched to Microsoft, who were interested in it as a X360 launch title, and they were willing to pay SAS for 3 months to make a prototype. They were especially excited about this as a Xenon (X360) launch title, and they were a week away from signing on with Microsoft to develop the Guerrilla prototype when Blizzard approached them with the Ghost opportunity.

There was a discussion about Guerrilla vs Ghost, but Ghost made the most financial sense because Blizzard was committing to years of funding vs the 3 months from Microsoft just for a prototype.

Steve has graciously provided me with the original Power Point Presentation doc (25 pages) that was pitched to Microsoft. He noted that the address at the bottom of the presentation was their old location. They moved into a much larger facility to develop Ghost, but the first site was where they developed Metal Arms and it's now Aliso Viejo's City Hall. (The other documents with in-game screenshots I'll create in a second post.)

Quick post. This one slipped under my radar.

You know how for a while now I've been saying that Blizzard's Next Gen MMO will have In-Game Advertisements?

Well, I have some proof now to back up that claim: Blizzard's Next-Gen MMO Franchise Development Producer position. Here is one of their primary responsibilities:

Work with major consumer brands to facilitate product placement and licensing within the world of Blizzard Entertainment's next-gen MMO that enhances the gameplay experience.

In-game advertisements and product placement are planned for the Next-Gen MMO from "major consumer brands." :)

We also know that Titan will have transmedia, and this position will be responsible for the various "Books / Novels, Action figures, Comics, Short movies & Apparel" related to Titan. Marketing like this confirms Cameron Dayton's tweets about having main Heroes and Villains within the game. This ensures that the game is built within a fixed world with memorable and colorful characters. This all gives more credence to the fact that it will be a general MMO (like World of Warcraft) and not a craftable world where users create their own world or adventures (like Second Life).

"You Are Being Prepared" is a good read, and this just further demonstrates how their Next Gen MMO is actually a repeat of the past. :)

Their Next Gen MMO isn't as new as some people might think, and it's a repeat of the past in more ways than one.... more on this later.

Meanwhile, here are some things to keep in mind which I may need to recycle later:

• Product placement of real world things can only function within certain game genres (i.e. modern world, scifi, post-apocalyptic). :)
• Blizzard will never compete with any Activision Blizzard titles. They won't have a competing genre or setting. For example, while Diablo is active, there won't be another Action RPG. A Diablo MMO would compete with WOW. A new Action RPG will be created, though, once Diablo 3 dies down (7-8 years from now.) While SC2 is active, there won't be another RTS. WC4 will come out when SC2 dies, leaving "Starcraft 3" as a non-RTS game. Activision won't create a fantasy MMO while WOW is popular, and Blizzard won't create a COD modern shooter while COD is popular. (Sony learned this lesson the hard way.)
• Blizzard does NOT innovate; they take from others and improve upon it. (Blizzard themselves have even stated that they never innovate.) Think to yourself; who are Activision Blizzard's biggest competitors and what are their biggest video games (that both Activision and Blizzard are currently not competing against)?

Here's a news item from December 3rd regarding the Korean D3 approval. (Thanks Ichigo.)

Based on my rough translation:

• It appears that the GRB had asked Blizzard Korea for private testing of Diablo 3.
• The GRB confirmed with this news site that certain results from December 2nd were completed, and now they're moving onto the deliberation stage. This confirms Blizzard's post when they had said they "were in deliberations." So that post from a couple days ago were indeed because some progress had been made.
• The GRB officer said that generally it takes two weeks for deliberation, but due to the subject matter in Diablo 3, there's "greater resistance" in reviewing this game so it could take a little bit more.
• I think it says the results of the deliberations are expected to be released in January.
• They did confirm, though, that Diablo 3 was/is being held up due to this private testing by the GRB and that Blizzard Korea applied for consideration using the Global version (which includes cash auctions.)

So, apparently some real progress has been made, and it wasn't just a coincidence that Blizzard Korea released that news announcement, and also not a coincidence that Blizzard HQ started posting all of those Diablo and Blizzard Anniversary related news items this week.

(I posted a theory about news release schedules, and how Blizzard uses them to keep players busy with information until the final release. They'll drag out news posts if they need to extend the release date of games for example, which is why they increased the "Day In A Life" posts from 3 to 5 people, and dragged out all of the D3 information. It also explains why there was a sudden explosion of D3 info releases and game related updates within the past week.)

Blizzard is fully expecting it to be approved (probably by January), and it appears that the Korea launch was (and is) indeed holding back the Global release. As long as there are no problems, I'm expecting that Diablo 3 will be a simultaneous global launch.

The only question now, though, is if Blizzard is going to wait for the results of the deliberation before making the release date announcement. They did, after all, say that they were fully expecting it to be approved with no issue. :)

I will be giving away two Path of Exile keys tomorrow. One at 12:00PM PST and the other at 1:00PM PST.

* UPDATE:

First key: FRY46-LLKEM-BLNQL-U____

Characters: M E L G

Will post the second in 1 hour.

* UPDATE:

Sorry, guys - I fucked up. That was the one from yesterday.

Here's the one for today: FRFCM-T2VNH-5WV5H-6PTVT

No puzzle this time, I still have another coming in 30 minutes though.

* UPDATE:

Second key: FRQGV-DSQH4-W3TVL-G____

Characters: 3 X H H

If you win the POE key, you'll also get a friend invite pretty quickly (you need to check back on your pathofexile.com mail account). If you want, just post it back here as a comment and I'll put it up for another contest. Or, just give it to your friend, whatever you want. Your friend's friend invite can be sent back here too so that we can keep cycling through these for our readers. :)