Outsourcing

Eidos Montreal outsourced Deus Ex: Human Revolution's controversial boss battles to Grip Entertainment, whose president Paul Kruszewski admits in a behind-the-scenes video that he came into the project with no prior experience of the series. "Full confession: I'm a shooter guy," he says. "I was coming into this not knowing a lot about the Deus Ex world. The guys at Eidos gave us the design, gave us the engine…and we gave them back that experience." Many players will agree with Kruszewski's admission that bosses were a tough balancing act given the freedom afforded by the game's augmentation system - "Balancing that was brutally hard," he says - but may disagree with his claim that Grip succeeded. "I've been building technology for 20 years," he says, "and it's one of the cleanest, best pieces of technology I've ever built."

A trio of senior staff members recently made redundant when THQ Digital Warrington closed its doors have established a new UK games outfit based in the North West. Founded by Digital Warrington senior concept artist Paul Dolan, studio graphic designer Donna Jennett and art director Stuart Jennett, Alien Apple Studios will offer a range of concept design services from vehicle, character, environment and UI design through to product branding, Develop reports. “It’s exciting times for studios like us, in the games industry especially there is a long-term change in the production model starting to emerge with outsourcing becoming the norm,” said Jennett. “As well as the big publishers there’s also a boom in small independent studios again that hopefully we can provide for. We’ve already had some amazing interest, we’re a strong team with a lot of skills and imagination to offer and I’ve every confidence for Alien Apple Studios' future.”