Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Video games |
Founded | October 25, 1994 [1] |
Founders |
|
Headquarters | Kirkland, Washington, United States |
Number of employees | 100+ (2004) [2] |
Parent | Warner Bros. Games (2004–present) |
Website | lith |
Monolith Productions, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Kirkland, Washington. The company has been a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Games since August 2004. [3] It formerly published third-party games in the 1990s.
Monolith Productions was founded on October 25, 1994, by Brian Goble, Brian Waite, Bryan Bouwman, Garrett Price, Jace Hall, Paul Renault, and Toby Gladwell. [4]
Co-founder Brian Goble had this to say regarding the company name.
At the time we formed the company, DOS was still the OS of choice for games. Because of this, we knew we had to come up with a name that was 8 characters or less (for 8.3 filenames). We had been researching story and technology ideas for our demo CD and we were watching a lot of movies. "Monolith" came up, was semi mysterious, wasn't taken, and was 8 characters. Perfect. [4]
The company is best known for the Blood , No One Lives Forever and F.E.A.R series. Monolith developed the LithTech game engine which was used for most of their games starting with Shogo: Mobile Armor Division in September 1998. Between 1997 and 1999, Monolith also published games–some developed by the studio, some by third parties.
In 2004, Monolith Productions was acquired by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment (now Warner Bros. Games). [3]
In 2014, the company released the title Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor with a sequel entitled Middle-earth: Shadow of War being released in 2017.
In 2021, the company announced that they are developing a video game starring Wonder Woman. [5]
Year | Title | Platform(s) | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
PC | Console | Handheld | ||
1997 | Blood | MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows | — | — |
Claw | Microsoft Windows | — | — | |
1998 | Get Medieval | Microsoft Windows | — | — |
Shogo: Mobile Armor Division | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Linux, AmigaOS | — | — | |
Blood II: The Chosen | Microsoft Windows | — | — | |
1999 | Gruntz | Microsoft Windows | — | — |
TNN Outdoors Pro Hunter 2 | Microsoft Windows | — | — | |
2000 | Sanity: Aiken's Artifact | Microsoft Windows | — | — |
The Operative: No One Lives Forever | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS | PlayStation 2 | — | |
2001 | Tex Atomic's Big Bot Battles | Microsoft Windows | — | — |
Aliens Versus Predator 2 | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS | — | — | |
2002 | No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS | — | — |
2003 | Tron 2.0 | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS | Xbox | Game Boy Advance |
Contract J.A.C.K. | Microsoft Windows | — | — | |
2005 | The Matrix Online | Microsoft Windows | — | — |
F.E.A.R. | Microsoft Windows | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | — | |
Condemned: Criminal Origins | Microsoft Windows | Xbox 360 | — | |
2008 | Condemned 2: Bloodshot | — | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | — |
2009 | F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin | Microsoft Windows | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | — |
2012 | Gotham City Impostors | Microsoft Windows | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | — |
Guardians of Middle-earth | Microsoft Windows | PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | — | |
2014 | Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor | Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux | PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 | — |
2017 | Middle-earth: Shadow of War | Microsoft Windows | PlayStation 4, Xbox One | — |
TBA | Untitled Wonder Woman video game | TBA |
Year | Title | Platform(s) |
---|---|---|
PC | ||
1994 | Maabus | MS-DOS |
1998 | Rage of Mages | Microsoft Windows |
1999 | Rage of Mages II: Necromancer | Microsoft Windows |
Septerra Core: Legacy of the Creator | Microsoft Windows | |
Gorky 17 | Microsoft Windows, Mac OS, Linux, AmigaOS | |
Westwood Studios, Inc. was an American video game developer, based in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was founded by Brett Sperry and Louis Castle in 1985 as Brelous Software, but got changed after 2 months into Westwood Associates and was renamed to Westwood Studios when Virgin Games bought the company in 1992. The company was bought by Electronic Arts alongside Virgin Interactive's North American operations in 1998. In January 2003, it was announced that Westwood, alongside Westwood Pacific, would be merged into EA Los Angeles. The main studio location closed in March of that year.
The Operative: No One Lives Forever is a first-person shooter video game with stealth gameplay elements, developed by Monolith Productions and published by Fox Interactive, released for Windows in 2000. The game was ported later to the PlayStation 2 and Mac OS X in 2002.
LithTech is a game engine developed by Monolith Productions and comparable with the Quake and Unreal engines. Monolith and a number of other video game developers have used LithTech as the basis for their first-person shooter games.
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F.E.A.R. is a first-person shooter psychological horror video game series created by Craig Hubbard in 2005. Released on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360, there are three main games in the series; F.E.A.R. (2005), F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin (2009), and F.E.A.R. 3 (2011). There are also two standalone expansion packs for the first game; F.E.A.R. Extraction Point (2006) and F.E.A.R. Perseus Mandate (2007), but these games are no longer considered canon, as their plots were ignored in Project Origin and F.E.A.R. 3. In 2014, F.E.A.R. Online, a free-to-play game, was released, but the servers were shut down in 2015 with the game still in open beta. Monolith Productions developed the original game and Project Origin; Day 1 Studios developed F.E.A.R. 3; TimeGate Studios developed Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate; Inplay Interactive developed F.E.A.R. Online. Initially, the series' publishing rights were owned by Vivendi Games, who published the original game and the two expansions under the Sierra Entertainment label. In 2008, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment acquired the publishing rights and went on to publish Project Origin and F.E.A.R. 3. Aeria Games published F.E.A.R. Online under license from Warner.
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Middle-earth: Shadow of War is a 2017 action-adventure video game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment. Shadow of War is the sequel to 2014's Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, both of which are based on J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. The game is set in between the events of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings film trilogies, from which the game also takes inspiration. The player continues the story of Talion, the Gondorian Ranger who bonded with the wraith of the Elf Lord Celebrimbor, as they forge a new Ring of Power to amass an army to fight against Sauron. The game builds upon the "nemesis system" introduced in Shadow of Mordor, allowing Talion to gain followers from several races of Middle-earth and command them in warfare.