Oxide Games is 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 ...

based in

Lutherville-Timonium, Maryland Lutherville-Timonium was a census-designated place (CDP) in Baltimore County, Maryland, Baltimore County, Maryland, United States, for the 2000 census. At that time the population was 15,814. For the 2010 census the area was split into two CDPs, t ...

. The studio was founded in January 2013 by

Brad Wardell Bradley R. Wardell (born June 24, 1971) is an American businessman, programmer, author and AI Engineer. He is the founder, president, and chief executive officer of Stardock, a software development and computer games company. Wardell's specialty i ...

and former

Firaxis Firaxis Games, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Sparks, Maryland. The company was founded in May 1996 by Sid Meier, Jeff Briggs and Brian Reynolds following their departure from MicroProse, Meier's earlier venture. They were a ...

employees Dan Baker, Marc Meyer, Brian Wade, and Tim Kipp.

History

Oxide Games focuses primarily on games and game engines for the

Personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or tec ...

(PC). Initially founded to develop a next-generation game engine and games to use it the studio developed the Nitrous engine to take advantage of new graphics APIs that allowed multiple CPU cores to simultaneously access the GPU such as

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", ...

12 and

Mantle (API) Mantle was a low-overhead rendering API targeted at 3D video games. AMD originally developed Mantle in cooperation with DICE, starting in 2013. Mantle was designed as an alternative to Direct3D and OpenGL, primarily for use on personal computers, ...

. The studio's first release of its Nitrous technology came in the form of Star Swarm, a demonstration of thousands of 3D entities on screen to demonstrate the potential of a multicore rendering and task system. In 2016, the studio's first game was published by

Stardock Stardock Corporation is a software development company founded in 1991 and incorporated in 1993 as Stardock Systems. Stardock initially developed for the OS/2 platform, but was forced to switch to Microsoft Windows due to the collapse of the OS/ ...

Ashes of the Singularity ''Ashes of the Singularity'' is a real-time strategy video game developed by Oxide Games and Stardock Entertainment. The game was released for Microsoft Windows on March 31, 2016. The game features massive battles involving thousands of units on ...

. It was the first game to make use of DirectX 12 after previously making a pre-beta version of it available as a benchmark for the new API. The studio's founders helped contributed to High-Level Shader Language (HLSL) and have worked on several notable titles including ''Civilization'', ''Command and Conquer'''','' and ''

Galactic Civilizations ''Galactic Civilizations'' is a turn-based strategy video game developed by Stardock and released in March 2003. The game is a remake of an OS/2 series of the same name. An expansion pack entitled ''Altarian Prophecy'' was released in 2004. A se ...

'' series. On June 12, 2022 as part of the Xbox & Bethesda Games Showcase 2022, Oxide announced '' Ara: History Untold''. This will be a 4X game comparable to the ''Civilization'' series of games that many members of the Oxide Games team worked on prior to the studio's formation.

Games developed

Nitrous Engine

Nitrous Engine is the proprietary game engine software used in development for Oxide Games products. It uses the power of its proprietary SWARM (Simultaneous Work and Rendering Model) technology to achieve incredible performance on modern, multi-core computer hardware. SWARM allows Nitrous to do things previously thought impossible in real-time 3D rendering, like Object Space Lighting—the same techniques used in the film industry—and having thousands of unique individual units onscreen at once. In 2016 Oxide and Dan Baker were part of the first major tech Demo for DX12 along with Brian Langley, Microsoft's DirectX 12 lead, Max McMullen, Microsoft's principle lead for Direct3D. In April 2020 AMD and Oxide Games announced a multi-year partnership to co-develop graphics technologies for the growing cloud gaming market. The companies plan to create a robust set of tools and technologies for cloud rendering designed from the ground up to embrace the real-time demands of cloud-based gaming. The Nitrous engine has been used by

on a number of games including Star Control: Origins and Siege of Centauri.

Accolades

In 2020, the studio was recognized by ''

The Baltimore Sun ''The Baltimore Sun'' is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries. Founded in 1837, it is currently owned by Tr ...

'' as one of Baltimore's Top Small Employers for the year.

External links

Official website

References

{{Reflist 2013 establishments in Maryland Companies based in Baltimore County, Maryland Indie game developers Video game companies established in 2013 Video game companies of the United States Video game development companies