It's the King of Limboooooo!
Considering how the entertainment industry is tripping over themselves to stop piracy and protect their property, I'm disappointed that none of the gaming companies have torn into Majestic Studios yet. Majestic, for its part, has finally released a statement.
"In response to the shocking notification that some alleged unauthorized copyrighted materials submitted by sources external to the development team have been found within the PC game Limbo of the Lost, we (the development team) have given our consent and full cooperation to both publishers who are recalling all units from all territories immediately.
Please be assured that we do not condone in anyway the use of unauthorized copyrighted materials and if we had been made aware earlier, we would of course have ceased development of the product and rectified the issue prior to the publication process.
To the best of our knowledge no one at Majestic, [European publisher] G2Games or [North American publisher Tri Synergy, Inc.] knew about this infringement and knowingly played any part in it.
We can only apologise to all regarding this issue, as a team we are shocked and mortified regarding these events and we continue to work with said publishers in order to rectify the issue."[1]
This, "we didn't do it. A third party did," excuse though falls flat when you look at a couple interviews and forum threads Steve Bovis gave over the years.
Tim Croucher (UK) - Researcher and assistant vocalist, game designer/playtester.
I met Tim right at the beginning of the project, we were both adventure game fans and decided to make an adventure game of our own - Limbo of the Lost was born.
Laurence Francis (UK) - Puzzles, Lead vocalist and assistant game designer/Musician.
Laurence joined the team when we were starting the Amiga version and has been a strong member ever since. Laurence is the voice of the main character - Benjamin Spooner Briggs as well as other characters in LIMBO.
Marko "Gravehill" Hautamäki (Germany) - Level-Atmosphere Musician.
I got to know Marko from a forum I was on and he was looking to work on a game project. I heard some of his work and was suitably impressed. To date he has done more than 13 musical pieces for the game. Marko is the newest team member.
Lisa Highsted (UK) - Contracts and Support
Lisa sorts out contract negotiations / publishers, she joined the team on the PC version of the game. She also play-tests and reviews content on a regular basis.
Heather Banks (UK) - Playtester & Support
Heather helps out on playtesting the game, general development feedback and development support. She too joined the team on the PC version
Myself - Steve Bovis (UK) - Creative/Project Director
That then leaves me, my job is to put the game together and create all the visuals, coding, sounds, models, marketing and basically make the game flow and work. As well as manage and try to motivate the team. A job that is hard enough at the best of times!
As you can see we are a small team and with that comes pluses and minuses, the plus is that development costs are low and we have 100% creative decision. The negative is the time it takes to create game content with such a small team.[2]
And back in 2004:
The backgrounds are created in 3D GAMESTUDIO A6 , they are textured, lit and then I place a camera at a certain position and grab a still. This becomes the initial background plate.
Then I take a cut of all the light areas, like where the torches are etc. I create small animated sprites of the light which thus creates a torch flicker on the walls when ran really fast. (You have to be quite subtle with this tho!)
All the characters are modelled and then put into POSER 5 where thay are manipulated, I also use MIMIC 2 to lip synch the recorded voices to the chracter models. [3]
I suppose next he'll say that wasn't really him.
Just for groans, check out the "surprise" musical ending to the game.
"In response to the shocking notification that some alleged unauthorized copyrighted materials submitted by sources external to the development team have been found within the PC game Limbo of the Lost, we (the development team) have given our consent and full cooperation to both publishers who are recalling all units from all territories immediately.
Please be assured that we do not condone in anyway the use of unauthorized copyrighted materials and if we had been made aware earlier, we would of course have ceased development of the product and rectified the issue prior to the publication process.
To the best of our knowledge no one at Majestic, [European publisher] G2Games or [North American publisher Tri Synergy, Inc.] knew about this infringement and knowingly played any part in it.
We can only apologise to all regarding this issue, as a team we are shocked and mortified regarding these events and we continue to work with said publishers in order to rectify the issue."[1]
This, "we didn't do it. A third party did," excuse though falls flat when you look at a couple interviews and forum threads Steve Bovis gave over the years.
Tim Croucher (UK) - Researcher and assistant vocalist, game designer/playtester.
I met Tim right at the beginning of the project, we were both adventure game fans and decided to make an adventure game of our own - Limbo of the Lost was born.
Laurence Francis (UK) - Puzzles, Lead vocalist and assistant game designer/Musician.
Laurence joined the team when we were starting the Amiga version and has been a strong member ever since. Laurence is the voice of the main character - Benjamin Spooner Briggs as well as other characters in LIMBO.
Marko "Gravehill" Hautamäki (Germany) - Level-Atmosphere Musician.
I got to know Marko from a forum I was on and he was looking to work on a game project. I heard some of his work and was suitably impressed. To date he has done more than 13 musical pieces for the game. Marko is the newest team member.
Lisa Highsted (UK) - Contracts and Support
Lisa sorts out contract negotiations / publishers, she joined the team on the PC version of the game. She also play-tests and reviews content on a regular basis.
Heather Banks (UK) - Playtester & Support
Heather helps out on playtesting the game, general development feedback and development support. She too joined the team on the PC version
Myself - Steve Bovis (UK) - Creative/Project Director
That then leaves me, my job is to put the game together and create all the visuals, coding, sounds, models, marketing and basically make the game flow and work. As well as manage and try to motivate the team. A job that is hard enough at the best of times!
As you can see we are a small team and with that comes pluses and minuses, the plus is that development costs are low and we have 100% creative decision. The negative is the time it takes to create game content with such a small team.[2]
And back in 2004:
The backgrounds are created in 3D GAMESTUDIO A6 , they are textured, lit and then I place a camera at a certain position and grab a still. This becomes the initial background plate.
Then I take a cut of all the light areas, like where the torches are etc. I create small animated sprites of the light which thus creates a torch flicker on the walls when ran really fast. (You have to be quite subtle with this tho!)
All the characters are modelled and then put into POSER 5 where thay are manipulated, I also use MIMIC 2 to lip synch the recorded voices to the chracter models. [3]
I suppose next he'll say that wasn't really him.
Just for groans, check out the "surprise" musical ending to the game.
Click to view