The collapse of Midway put a community of developers out of work and assured that many projects in various stages would never see the light of day.
But that misfortune has something of a silver lining: Many are getting back on their feet, and they're able to talk about their past experiences and ideas in a way that they couldn't if they'd been let go from a still-active company.
Chip Sineni was part of a Midway team working on a labor of love called
Hero, which after two years of development became a heartbreaking 11th-hour casualty of the company's implosion. Speaking
exclusively to Gamasutra, Sineni offers a rarely-seen look inside what those last days were like.
"Besides losing your jobs, it is like a friend died," he says in today's feature. "Many of us had two years of eating and sleeping this game. Not sure if it is hope or denial, but you really try hard to keep anything of a team together."
But there's been an upside: Much of
Hero's original team did, in fact, stay, and they're revisiting some of the core concepts as part of a new studio, Phosphor Games.
The studio's been sustaining itself through contract work -- including, Sineni reveals, some projects for Epic Games and a level of
Kinect Adventures -- and now they're able to revive their dream through
Awakened.
Awakened is Phosphor's new passion project, pinned on the concepts of complete action character customization. Sineni says
Awakened wants to let players create their own superheroes to an unprecedented degree of personal detail, from abilities to appearance.
Today's feature contains never before seen footage and images from
Hero to
Awakened, plus many details on the fascinating journey from Midway's last days through
Awakened's rebirth today.
