Welcome to Beyond Co-Op, the weekly piece where we look at some of the biggest news around the gaming industry that may or may not pertain to cooperative gaming. This week's news is marred by the death of one of the oldest gaming studios out there and then turn around and highlighted by what the gaming industry has become - Kickstarter. It seems all three news items today come from PC gaming roots.
Disney Closes Lucas Arts, High Moons Studios Laid off Too
Thief 4 Trailer
Torment: Tides of Numeria Raises 4 Million on Kickstarter
Disney Closes Lucas Arts, High Moons Studios Laid off Too
Disney has closed developer Lucas Arts, a development house that's been around for over 20 years. The studio is famous for titles like X-Wing, Tie-Fighter, and other space combat games in the heyday of PC gaming - not to mention adventure titles like Monkey Island. Recent titles like Force Unleashed were also decently received. Their current project was called 1313 and look promising.
In related news Activision has shutdown developer High Moon Studios who were working on a Dead Pool game. The studio also worked on the recent Transformers title.
Thief 4 Trailer
Classic franchise Thief is back, entering a world where Sam Fisher and Solid Snake have been around for a while. Can our hero compete in the stealth genre?
Torment: Tides of Numeria Raises 4 Million on Kickstarter
inXile is creating a new single player classic RPG isometric RPG set in the Torment universe and they went to Kickstarter to get the funds. The end result? 4.18 million dollars - the biggest ever for a game on Kickstarter. The game isn't set to be released until 2015 either so this was really a project built from the ground up to be crowd funded. The original goal? $900,000 - I'd say they met that. There's plenty of stretch goals that will now be completed.
Source: Kickstarter