Midway Studios - Newcastle

Overview

The game development studio was founded as The Pitbull Syndicate Limited in December 1996 and was based in Newcastle, England. The company was especially known for its driving games. In October 2005 it was acquired by Midway and renamed Midway Studios - Newcastle.

Following Midway's filing for bankruptcy in February 2009 and the acquisition of most of the assets and some studios by Warner Bros. in July 2009, the Newcastle studio was not included in the deal and closed in that same month. Midway Newcastle's last title was Wheelman (2009), even though work was already started on new intellectual property titled Necessary Force. Developer Steven Pick described the game on his blog this way:

Set in the future, our game would put you in the shoes of a street-toughened cop who would have morality choices during his investigation. You would piece together evidence, make connections, go looking for new suspects and interrogate them. Work had already begun modifying the Wheelman engine to a much more gritter and impressive-looking result; the concept guys began producing beautiful renderings of the cityscape, characters and vehicles, while the designers were busy with documentation and possible scenarios. I spent the time producing graphics and concepts for the cop's PDA unit, which would be an integral part of the evidence gathering and manipulation. We had a lot of nice ideas for the game - for instance, the morality system affected the weather and time of day too. If you were a bad-ass cop, the days would feel shorter, and it would rain more often. This was also linked to a system where the city would systematically be cleaned up - more desirable pedestrians, graffiti taken off walls and newer, more optimisitc buildings taking the place of the run-down buildings.

After the studio was closed, the studio members moved on to other jobs and a large number of designers went to work at Ruffian Games. A number of artists went on to found Atomhawk Design Ltd., a creative visualisation and digital art production company.

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