Massive Development GmbH was a German

video game developer A video game developer is a broad term for a software developer specializing in video game development – the process and related disciplines of creating video games. A game developer can range from one person who undertakes all tasks to a larg ...

based in

Mannheim Mannheim (; Palatine German: or ), officially the University City of Mannheim (german: Universitätsstadt Mannheim), is the second-largest city in the German state of Baden-Württemberg after the state capital of Stuttgart, and Germany's ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

. Founded as Massive Development GbR, the company was active between 1994 and 2005 and is primarily known for their

post-apocalyptic Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction in which the Earth's (or another planet's) civilization is collapsing or has collapsed. The apocalypse event may be climatic, such as runaway climate change; ast ...

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imagination, imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, Paral ...

video games '' Archimedean Dynasty'' and '' AquaNox'', which have attained somewhat of a cult status.

History

Massive Development was founded in 1994 by Alexander Jorias, Ingo Frick and Oliver Weirich in Mannheim as Massive Development GbR. Their first product was the porting of the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers introduced by Commodore International, Commodore in 1985. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16- or 32-bit processors, 256 KB or more of RAM, mouse-based GUIs, and sign ...

game '' The Settlers'' to

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few oper ...

in 1994. In 1996 they released the successful

science-fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel univer ...

submarine role-playing

video game Video games, also known as computer games, are electronic games that involves interaction with a user interface or input device such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device to gener ...

''Archimedean Dynasty'', published by Blue Byte. In December 2000, Massive Development was bought by the Austrian publisher JoWooD. Until 2000, Massive Development worked on its own game engine called "krass Engine", which was used for their next title '' AquaNox''. It was one of the first games to make use of the new capabilities of graphic cards with T&L hardware, which is why ''AquaNox'' was also bundled with new graphic cards. On 30 May 2005, the development studio was closed by JoWooD, and by that cancelling the development of '' AquaNox: The Angel's Tears'' for the PlayStation 2. Two of the original founders, Alexander Jorias and Ingo Frick, are now working on a 3D chat with Social Networking Features, titled ''Club Cooee''.

Developed games

* '' The Settlers'' (

port) (1994) - released in

under its original title ''Die Siedler'', and in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

as ''Serf City: Life is Feudal'' * '' Archimedean Dynasty'' (1996) - released in Germany under its original title ''Schleichfahrt'' * '' krass Engine'' (2001) - engine of the '' AquaNox'' series and '' SpellForce'', and

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement c ...

of ''

Legend of Kay ''Legend of Kay'' is an action-adventure and platforming video game for the PlayStation 2 by German developer Neon Studios about a young anthropomorphic cat warrior named Kay who fights to save his once-peaceful island from the gorillas and rats ...

'' * '' AquaNox'' (2001) * '' AquaNox 2: Revelation'' (2003) * '' AquaNox: The Angel's Tears'' (canceled)

References

External links

* {{Authority control Companies based in Mannheim Video game development companies Video game companies established in 1994 Video game companies disestablished in 2005 Defunct video game companies of Germany