Groove pins hopes on Pariah

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Groove pins hopes on Pariah


By NEIL DAVIDSON
Canadian Press

TORONTO — Pariah may be set on a futuristic prison planet but the first-person shooter video game is a made-in-Toronto affair.

Developed by Digital Extremes and published by Groove Games, Pariah is set in the year 2520 and tells the story of a Jack Mason, a doctor who has seen better days. Assigned to watch over a routine prison transfer, his ship is shot down over the prison sector of a now wasteland Earth.

Mason — and a prisoner infected with some kind of disease — find themselves on the run from all sorts of gun-toting enemies.

Pariah, rated M for mature for Xbox and PC, is a key title to Digital which spent three years making it. The Toronto company created the concept for Pariah itself, so is hoping it will turn into a profitable franchise. A sequel is already in the works and Pseudo Interactive Games, another Toronto developer, is currently working on the PlayStation 2 version of the original game.

Pariah is also important for Groove, a Toronto company that stepped into the big leagues last year by co-publishing Playboy: The Mansion.

The fact both are based in Toronto proved to be a godsend as production of Pariah went down to the wire. If something went wrong, the solution was often a cab ride away as opposed to waiting for a courier to deliver a package.

"We were working incredibly closely together. It was a situation where we had kind of essentially mind-melded," said Jon Walsh, CEO of Groove.

"We had our testers over at their office. Their guys were coming to our office ... It was constant communication, constant back and forth between offices."

Groove, which has 10 full-time and 12 to 14 part-time employees, funded Pariah's development and took care of all the marketing. Walsh says the budget was "well into seven figures."

"We also had a seven-figure marketing budget and I'm not talking barely seven figures," he added.

"And I still think, on a relative scale, Pariah was a good deal. There are literally guys spending $15- to $20-million on development alone."

Pariah's budget may have been relatively conservative by today's standards, but Walsh acknowledges there's always a lot at stake in producing a big game.

"Sometimes I go to bed and think 'Man, how are we doing this?"' Walsh admitted. "At other times I wake up and I think 'You know what? We can do it and not only can we do it, but we're doing it better than other guys.'

"So you get that real emotional roller-coaster sometimes. And some nights are a little less sleep than others. But that's business. . . . And I never feel like we will fail."

There is no shortage of first-person shooters on the market, with Halo and Halo 2 setting the standard.

Digital has its own impressive credentials, having co-created the successful Unreal and Unreal Tournament series with Epic Games. Groove, meanwhile, "cut its teeth on value-priced shooters," according to Walsh.

The Groove boss said Digital's track record convinced him to sign on. Walsh reckons there may only be a half-dozen developers on the planet who "can make a real triple-A shooter and pull it off and we believe Digital Extremes was one of them."

Digital founder James Schmalz, meanwhile, said he chose Groove because he wanted a publisher 100-per-cent behind Pariah, fearing a more established big-name outfit might not commit totally to a new project.

Digital started working with Epic on the Unreal games in the mid-'90s, parting ways after Unreal Tournament 2004. Epic owned the Unreal licence and has continued with the hit franchise, with UT 2007 slated for release next year.

"We just grew to the size where we needed to work independently," said Schmalz.

Plus there are advantages to having your own intellectual property, rather than somebody else's.

While Digital is known for first-person shooters, Schmalz says his company may try a different direction in the future given the glut of such games on the market.

Digital's studio in London, Ont., is already working on a new project called Dark Sector — a game Digital is funding itself — while the Toronto team works on Pariah 2.

Schmalz's company has about 60 employees, with two divisions. Brainbox, the other part of his empire, is currently working on a zombie game for the Xbox.

Pariah started out more as a vehicle combat game but gradually evolved over a period of a year. No stranger to designing weapons, Schmalz provides a twist by allowing gamers to upgrade the guns in the game.

In addition to its single-player and multiplayer modes, Pariah also offers a nifty map editor that allows gamers to design their own environments.

"It all really came together nicely as a big package," said Schmalz.

[url=\"http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050531.gtpariahmay31/BNStory/AtPlay/\"]source: Globe Technology[/url]