Massive Development GmbH was a German video game developer 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, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. 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 imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel uni ...

video games ''

Archimedean Dynasty ''Archimedean Dynasty'' (German: ''Schleichfahrt'', meaning silent running) was the first of the ''AquaNox'' series of computer games, developed by Massive Development and published by Blue Byte in 1996. On July 29, 2015, after years of non-ava ...

'' and ''

AquaNox ''AquaNox'' is a series of submarine-based first-person shooter/simulation video games set in the distant future. The collection includes ''AquaNox'', ''AquaNox 2: Revelation'' and ''AquaNox: The Angel's Tears''. The predecessor and the starter of t ...

'', which have attained somewhat of a

cult status A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...

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 game ''

The Settlers ''The Settlers'' (german: Die Siedler) is a city-building and real-time strategy video game series created by Volker Wertich. The original game was released on the Commodore Amiga in 1993, with subsequent games released primarily on MS-DOS a ...

'' 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 ope ...

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 unive ...

submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...

role-playing Role-playing or roleplaying is the changing of one's behaviour to assume a role, either unconsciously to fill a social role, or consciously to act out an adopted role. While the ''Oxford English Dictionary'' offers a definition of role-playing a ...

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, controller, keyboard, or motion sensing device to generate visual feedback. This fee ...

''Archimedean Dynasty'', published by

Blue Byte Ubisoft Blue Byte GmbH (Blue Byte until 2017) is a German video game holding company owned by Ubisoft. It was founded in October 1988 by Thomas Hertzler and Lothar Schmitt as a Video game developer, developer and was best known for developing t ...

. In December 2000, Massive Development was bought by the Austrian publisher

JoWooD JoWooD Entertainment AG (formerly JoWooD Productions Software AG, commonly referred to as JoWooD) was an Austrian video game publisher that was founded in 1995. JoWooD went into administration in 2011 and all assets were purchased by Nordic Game ...

. Until 2000, Massive Development worked on its own game engine called "krass Engine", which was used for their next title ''

''. It was one of the first games to make use of the new capabilities of

graphic card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or mistakenly GPU) is an expansion card which generates a feed of output images to a display device, such as a computer mo ...

s 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

* ''

'' (

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 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

as ''Serf City: Life is Feudal'' * ''

'' (1996) - released in Germany under its original title ''Schleichfahrt'' * '' krass Engine'' (2001) - engine of the ''

'' series and ''

SpellForce ''SpellForce'' is a real-time strategy and role-playing series created by Phenomic and currently owned by THQ Nordic. The first release was published by JoWooD Productions and Encore Software in 2003, and by THQ Nordic in 2017. Setting and p ...

'', 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'' * ''

'' (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