Soren Johnson launches Mohawk Games!

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Civilization IV designer, Soren Johnson has launched a new studio called Mohawk Games.

It’s been founded by Soren Johnson, Dorian Newcomb and myself.  Soren, as CEO comes up with what games we’re going to make and is also the creative director for the company.  Dorian, the art director of Civilization V is in charge of how the games will look and feel.  And me? As President, my job is to make sure Soren and Dorian have the necessary resources necessary to get the job done.

The first project is code-named Mars which will be using Oxide’s recently announced Nitrous 3D engine. We won’t have anything we can publicly show for awhile but I think strategy gamers are going to be very pleased with it.

As an industry, we’re entering an exciting new age. With retail finally officially dead (as far as PC games are concerned) and with 64-bit, multi-core game development finally having arrived, we are finally free to create some amazing, innovative strategy games that are also commercially viable.

During the retail age, people bought their games at the store and if the game wasn’t at the store, it wasn’t commercially viable.  As a result, game developers were either “indies” making very small games or they were huge (>$20 million), AAA titles that were increasingly “safe bets” in order to get onto store shelves. 

Now that PC gamers are comfortable going to Steam, you can create exciting and new types of games. These games can take a bit of a risk because there’s infinite shelf space for well crafted games.  And with a reasonable budget (still millions but nothing like $20 million) combined with 64-bit (for handling gorgeous scenes that were getting very hard to do in a 32-bit strategy game since they have to hold all the world in memory at once) we can have games that are both innovative and visually stunning.

That’s Mohawk’s mission. To create awesome core strategy games for this new age of gaming.  We’re in for some exciting times!

101,362 views 30 replies
Reply #1 Top

Well, holy shit!  More strategy games!  :thumbsup:

Reply #2 Top


congratulations, look forward to seeing the fruits in time

Reply #3 Top

Interested in this.  Hope it shares some similarities to Kohan, though it doesn't sound like it.

 

 

Reply #4 Top

Quoting Alstein, reply 3

Interested in this.  Hope it shares some similarities to Kohan, though it doesn't sound like it. 

Kohan with realistic sized armies....

:drool:

Reply #5 Top

Mars eh? I'm getting some Outpost vibes from that!

Reply #6 Top

Awesome, congrats!

This going to be the first Nitrous 3d game released, or do some of the other players in Oxide have something going as well?

Reply #7 Top

Congratulations and best wishes to all involved!

Reply #8 Top

let's hope the multiplayer is good

 

reading between the lines, there will be 0 effort put into AI

Reply #9 Top

Quoting The_Biz, reply 8

let's hope the multiplayer is good

 

reading between the lines, there will be 0 effort put into AI

And to be frank, the storyline sounds kind of awful.

Reply #10 Top

I read between the lines and only found empty space  =(

Reply #11 Top

/me smacks Brad on the head; "Get back to coding for GalCiv3!!!" :rofl: :grin: ;P

Reply #12 Top

2 of the 3 founders are professional AI developers and someone in here thinks we won't put effort into that?  

Reply #13 Top

Strategy gamers have had it pretty good lately, but this is just more icing on the cake! :)

 

Best of luck, looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with!

Reply #14 Top

Quoting Frogboy, reply 12

2 of the 3 founders are professional AI developers and someone in here thinks we won't put effort into that?  

 

this sounds unlikely:

1) there aren't enough resources to work on AI when there are lots of people on a project

2) reduce team size to 4

3) prioritize AI

 

but I'd be happy if I'm wrong :)

Reply #15 Top

Quoting Leo, reply 6

Awesome, congrats!

This going to be the first Nitrous 3d game released, or do some of the other players in Oxide have something going as well?

 

Civilization VI and Elemental II. :D

Reply #16 Top

I first and formost am a fan of TBS 4X, but love slow paced strategical RTS like the Europa Universalis-series. I'm also a huge fan of the strategical RTS Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander (the original).

 

This game sounds like it can turn out to take a place among my few, but great, RTS favorites.

Reply #17 Top

Very good news, was waiting for that one 'cause it seems the next logical step for you.

Good luck and one question:

In what timeframe you plan to release 'Mars'? 2015?

Reply #18 Top

This sound pretty cool.  I'll be eager to see what Mohawk comes up with! 

 

 

Reply #19 Top

RPS is saying that it's codenamed "Moon" and it's a real time strategy multiplayer game.  What's the truth! 

Reply #20 Top

It's code name is Mars and it's an RTS.

Reply #21 Top

But Mars has no Moons... or does it? PLOT!

Reply #22 Top

I think it has Phebos and Deimos are moons of Mars.  Probably spelled those wrong.

Reply #23 Top

Exciting times we live in.  Only thing I ask is if its a RTS game, please allow multiple levels of AI control, etc., as in DW. 

@ L Xia  Phobos and Deimos.  Don't worry, mars (won't) attack (you).

 

edit  sorry about font... not sure how it happened...

 

Reply #24 Top

Shit, I actually didn't know that. Stop educating me!

Reply #25 Top

To be fair, Phobos and Deimos are more like asteroids caught in Mars' orbit and relatively small;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars#Moons