Human Head Studios, Inc. was an American

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 large ...

located in

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...

History

Human Head Studios was founded in October 1997 by a group of six developers formerly from

Raven Software Raven Software Corporation is an American video game developer based in Wisconsin and founded in 1990. In 1997, Raven made an exclusive publishing deal with Activision and was subsequently acquired by them. After the acquisition, many of the st ...

: Ben Gokey, Chris Rhinehart, Paul MacArthur, Ted Halsted, James Sumwalt, and Shane Gurno—later joined by game producer

Tim Gerritsen Timothy S. Gerritsen is a producer and designer who has been involved primarily in video games. Career Tim Gerritsen was the Business Development Manager at Human Head Studios. Gerritsen decided to license a tabletop role-playing game for his com ...

as co-owner in June 1998. Regarding the origin of the studio's name, Gerritsen explained: "When the guys were thinking of leaving Raven Software, someone posted a message via e-mail that they had lost some money. This started people saying they had lost all sorts of things. One person posted that they had misplaced a bag of human heads and this gave the inspiration for the name." Their first game was ''

Rune Runes are the letter (alphabet), letters in a set of related alphabets known as runic alphabets native to the Germanic peoples. Runes were used to write various Germanic languages (with some exceptions) before they adopted the Latin alphabet, a ...

'', a third-person Viking

action game An action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes a large variety of sub-genres, such as fighting games, beat 'em ups, shooter games, and platform gam ...

. The company also worked on the long-anticipated

first-person shooter First-person shooter (FPS) is a sub-genre of shooter video games centered on gun and other weapon-based combat in a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action through the eyes of the protagonist and controlling the pl ...

Prey Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill the ...

'', a game that was executive produced by

3D Realms 3D Realms Entertainment ApS is a video game publisher based in Aalborg, Denmark. Scott Miller (entrepreneur), Scott Miller founded the company in his parents' home in Garland, Texas, in 1987 as Apogee Software Productions to release his game ' ...

. On April 20, 2007, a news report indicated that the company's headquarters were partially destroyed in a fire. No injuries were reported. On October 1, 2007, the company moved back into their newly renovated offices. In 2014, Human Head announced that they have revived a

multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

video game called ''Minimum'' from

TimeGate Studios TimeGate Studios was an American video game developer based in Sugar Land, Texas. The company, which was founded in 1998, released eight titles before closing in 2013. History TimeGate Studios was founded in 1998 by Alan and Adel Chaveleh, who r ...

, which filed for bankruptcy in 2013. Their final major release was the

infamous Infamous may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Film and television * ''Infamous'' (2006 film), an American drama film * ''Infamous'' (2020 film), an American crime thriller film * "Infamous", an episode of ''Lego Ninjago: Masters of Spinj ...

''The Quiet Man'', an action-adventure beat-em-up published by

Square Enix is a Japanese Multinational corporation, multinational holding company, production enterprise and entertainment conglomerate, best known for its ''Final Fantasy'', ''Dragon Quest'', ''Star Ocean'' and ''Kingdom Hearts'' role-playing video game ...

which features full-motion video cutscenes. On November 13, 2019, the studio announced its closure, immediately after the release of '' Rune 2''. The whole team subsequently formed a new studio, Roundhouse Studios, under

Bethesda Softworks Bethesda Softworks LLC is an American video game publisher based in Rockville, Maryland. The company was founded by Christopher Weaver in 1986 as a division of Media Technology Limited, and in 1999 became a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media. In its ...

. Chris Rhinehart of Human Head/Roundhouse stated that "Sadly, we had to wind down the business of Human Head Studios and close its doors", but had been able to reach out to Bethesda to establish this new studio.

Games developed

Cancelled

* ''

Prey 2 ''Prey 2'' was a cancelled first-person shooter video game to be published by Bethesda Softworks and planned as a sequel to the 2006 video game ''Prey''. Though ''Prey 2'' was announced by 3D Realms in 2006, a few months after release of the fir ...

References

External links

Human Head Studios
at

MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video games and the people and companies behind them via crowdsourcing. This includes nearly 300,000 games for hundreds of platforms. The site is supported by banner ads and a small ...

{{Authority control American companies established in 1997 American companies disestablished in 2019 Companies based in Madison, Wisconsin Privately held companies based in Wisconsin Defunct companies based in Wisconsin Video game companies established in 1997 Video game companies disestablished in 2019 Defunct video game companies of the United States Video game development companies 1997 establishments in Wisconsin 2019 disestablishments in Wisconsin