Alexis Kennedy | |
---|---|
Born | 1972 (age 50–51) |
Occupation | Video game writer, designer |
Notable works | Fallen London Sunless Sea Cultist Simulator |
Spouse | Ana Avalon (m. 2008;div. 2015)Lottie Bevan (m. 2022) |
Alexis Kennedy (born 1972) is a British video game writer, designer and entrepreneur. His video game work includes Fallen London , Sunless Sea and Cultist Simulator . [1] He co-founded Weather Factory, an independent game studio in London in 2017. Kennedy founded Failbetter Games in 2009, where he worked as its chief narrative officer and creative lead until 2016. [2] [3]
In 2009, Kennedy developed the browser game Fallen London. He founded the company Failbetter Games in January 2010. [4] Failbetter initially developed browser-based interactive fiction, including Fallen London and a platform called Story Nexus for other interactive fiction. [5] The company later developed narrative PC and mobile games, starting with Sunless Sea and an iOS port of Fallen London. Early in 2016, Kennedy opened Fundbetter, an initiative at Failbetter to fund promising narrative games and interactive fiction projects. As of May 2016, Fundbetter had announced five funded projects. [6]
In June 2016, Kennedy announced that he was leaving the company to do more creative, than managerial, work through freelancing. He sold his majority shareholder stake in Failbetter for 60 percent of the company's cash, rather than 60 percent of its value, to help the company operate without issue. [7] [8] [9]
In August 2016, Kennedy began work on a piece of standalone downloadable content (DLC) for Paradox Interactive's Stellaris . [10] In December 2016, the DLC was announced as an "interactive cosmic horror novelette" called Horizon Signal.
In September 2016, Kennedy said that he was working with the Dragon Age team in BioWare for an unannounced project as a freelance writer. [11] He also worked on an unspecified research and development project with Telltale Games. [12]
In 2017, Kennedy co-founded a game studio called Weather Factory with Lottie Bevan, a former producer at Failbetter, to make experimental games. The company used an open development process to create Cultist Simulator . Kennedy released an alpha version and a Kickstarter campaign to complete it was funded within one day. The game was released on 31 May 2018, with iOS and Android capability the next year. [13] [14] It was nominated for best debut game and game innovation at the British Academy Games Awards. [15] Kennedy reported in February 2019 that Cultist Simulator had grossed more than $1.76 million in sales. [16]
In 2019 he announced work on a game based on placing the player in charge of an occult library called Book of Hours, set in the same universe as Cultist Simulator. [17] [18] Book of Hours released on August 17, 2023. [19]
Kennedy's father was the pilot Hugh Kennedy, who died under unusual circumstances. [20] [21] He runs Weather Factory out of the spare bedroom of his home in London with his wife and fellow former Failbetter alumni Lottie Bevan. [22] [23] On several occasions, Kennedy has spoken about how the traumatic and unusual nature of his father's and brother's deaths have influenced his work. [24]
In August 2019, Kennedy was accused by Meg Jayanth, a writer on Sunless Sea, and Olivia Wood, a writer at Failbetter, of crossing "professional boundaries" with multiple women, including direct reports. [25] [26] [27] He denied the allegations, describing them as a "malicious misrepresentation", and stating that he was filing a police complaint. [26] [28] [29] In response to the allegations, three of the five projects participating in Weather Factory's mentorship program withdrew from it. [30] [27] Failbetter Games, in a statement on Twitter, said that "We believe and stand with everyone who has come forward to speak out about Alexis Kennedy tonight." [28]
BioWare is a Canadian video game developer based in Edmonton, Alberta. It was founded in 1995 by newly graduated medical doctors Ray Muzyka, Greg Zeschuk and Augustine Yip, alongside Trent Oster, Brent Oster, and Marcel Zeschuk. Since 2007, the company has been owned by American publisher Electronic Arts.
IO Interactive A/S (IOI) is a Danish video game developer based in Copenhagen, best known for creating and developing the Hitman and Kane and Lynch franchises. IO Interactive's most recent game is Hitman 3, which was released in January 2021.
Paradox Interactive AB is a video game publisher based in Stockholm, Sweden. The company started out as the video game division of Target Games and then Paradox Entertainment before being spun out into an independent company in 2004. Through a combination of expanding internal studios, founding new studios and purchasing independent developers, the company has grown to comprise nine first-party development studios, including their flagship Paradox Development Studio, and acts as publisher for games from other developers.
CCP hf., doing business as CCP Games, is an Icelandic video game developer based in Reykjavík. Novator Partners and General Catalyst had previously collectively owned a majority stake in the company, and in September 2018, CCP was acquired by South Korean video game publisher Pearl Abyss for $425 million. CCP Games is best known for developing Eve Online, which was released in 2003 and has since been maintained.
Emily Short is an interactive fiction (IF) writer and creative director of Failbetter Games, the studio behind Fallen London and its spinoffs.
Sunless Sea is a survival/exploration role-playing video game with roguelike elements developed by Failbetter Games. The game was released on 6 February 2015 for Windows and OS X following a successful Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund the project. The game takes place in the universe of Failbetter's browser adventure game Fallen London, in which Victorian-era London has been moved beneath the earth's surface to the edge of the Unterzee, a vast underground ocean. On 11 October 2016, the game's first downloadable content Zubmariner was released, which allows players to explore beneath the surface of the "zee". A sequel, Sunless Skies, was announced in September 2016. It surpassed its funding goals on Kickstarter and was released on 31 January 2019.
Asobo Studio SAS is a French video game developer based in Bordeaux and founded in 2002. The studio is most known for developing video game adaptations of several Pixar movies, A Plague Tale: Innocence, and the 2020 version of Microsoft Flight Simulator. The studio's name is derived from the Japanese word "asobō" (遊ぼう) that means "let's play".
Team Bondi Pty. Limited was an Australian video game developer based in Sydney. The company was founded by creative director Brendan McNamara, formerly of Team Soho, in 2003. The studio's first and only title, the action-adventure game L.A. Noire, was announced in July 2005. The development was originally funded and overseen by Sony Computer Entertainment Australia, although all publishing duties later switched hands to Rockstar Games. L.A. Noire was released by Rockstar Games, initially for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in May 2011, to both commercial and critical success. Despite the positive reception, Team Bondi faced several allegations of poor working conditions by several former employees, causing controversy for the studio and leading Rockstar Games to part ways with Team Bondi following L.A. Noire's release. As a result of this, the developer saw itself unable to sign a publishing deal for a new game that was being written by McNamara.
Rockstar Dundee Limited is a British video game developer and a studio of Rockstar Games based in Dundee. The studio is best known for developing Crackdown 2.
Fallen London, originally Echo Bazaar, is a browser-based interactive narrative game developed by Failbetter Games and set in "Fallen London", an alternative Victorian London with gothic overtones. The franchise subsequently expanded to other games, including Sunless Sea, its sequel Sunless Skies and the visual novel Mask of the Rose.
Bossa Studios Limited is a British video game developer based in London. It is known for its comedic, physics-based games Surgeon Simulator and I Am Bread.
Goat Simulator is a third-person perspective action video game developed and published by Coffee Stain Studios. It was released for Microsoft Windows in April 2014, and ports for Linux and OS X were released in June 2014. Mobile versions for Android and iOS were released in September 2014. Versions for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One were released in April 2015, and for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 in August 2015; these ports were developed by Double Eleven. A Nintendo Switch version containing the game and downloadable content was released in January 2019.
Cities: Skylines is a 2015 city-building game developed by Colossal Order and published by Paradox Interactive. The game is a single-player open-ended city-building simulation. Players engage in urban planning by controlling zoning, road placement, taxation, public services, and public transportation of an area. They also work to manage various elements of the city, including its budget, health, employment, traffic, and pollution levels. It is also possible to maintain a city in a sandbox mode, which provides more creative freedom for the player.
Failbetter Games is a British video game developer and interactive fiction studio based in London.
Meghna Jayanth is a video game writer and narrative designer. She is known for her writing on 80 Days and Sunless Sea. Jayanth worked at the BBC before becoming a freelance writer, and has also written for The Guardian on women and video games.
Stellaris is a 4X grand strategy video game developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive. In Stellaris, players take control of an interstellar civilization on the galactic stage and are tasked with exploring, colonizing, and managing their region of the galaxy, encountering other civilizations that they can then engage in diplomacy, trade, or warfare with. A large part of the game involves dealing with both scripted and emergent events, through which new empires alter the balance of power, powerful crises threaten the galaxy, or event chains tell the story of forgotten empires. It was released worldwide for Windows, macOS, and Linux on May 9, 2016 and for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One as Stellaris: Console Edition on February 26, 2019.
Sunless Skies is a role-playing video game developed by Failbetter Games. Partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign, the game entered early access in 2017 and released in January 2019, and has been described as a "Gothic horror roleplay game". Sunless Skies is a direct sequel to 2015's Sunless Sea and incorporates similar elements and setting.
Cultist Simulator is a card-based simulation video game developed by indie studio Weather Factory and published by Humble Bundle. It was released for Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux computer systems in May 2018, with mobile versions developed by Playdigious and released in April 2019. A port for Nintendo Switch was released in February 2021.
Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 is an upcoming action role-playing video game published by Paradox Interactive. A sequel to Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (2004), the game is part of the World of Darkness series and based on the tabletop role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade. The game was initially developed by Hardsuit Labs, but by 2021 had been moved to The Chinese Room. It is scheduled to release for PlayStation 5, Windows, and Xbox Series X/S in late 2024.
Mask of the Rose is a visual novel developed by Failbetter Games and is set in the same universe as Fallen London, Sunless Sea, and Sunless Skies. It has elements of detective games and dating sims. Mask of the Rose was released in June 2023 for Linux, macOS, Switch, and Windows.