(Originally posted for The Voice of Heard on February 17, 2012)
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| The official logo of Ninja Theory, first used on November 14, 2004 when the company was "reincarnated" from Just Add Monsters. |
When I think about the video game DmC: Devil May Cry (set
to be released sometime this year), I wonder whether or not Ninja Theory, the
UK-based developer I mentioned in most of my entries on the game, are qualified
for the remake/reboot produced by Capcom. With that thought in mind I did some
research on the development company, its origins, the people who founded it,
and the games they have created and released so far. For the past few days, I
surfed through various game websites for as many bits and pieces of information
as I could find, jotting down notes as a go. The following information
presented here may not be considered the most accurate to those who know the
company a little better than I do.
Founding a Small Company with a Vision
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| The logo of the UK-based video game company Argonaut Games that was used from 1994-2004, around the time Just Add Monsters was formed. |
In March 2000, three employees resigned from Sony Computer
Entertainment and founded a development studio in Cambridge, England called Just
Add Monsters. The founders, Mike Ball, Nina Kristensen, and Tameem Antoniades,
hope to one day “realize their vision of the future of games, technology and
development (at least, according to a short article on Ninja
Theory from MobyGames).” In October of the same year, the fledgling studio
was acquired by Argonaut Games, another UK-based company best known for the
development of the Super FX chip, a 3D graphics accelerator used for the Super
Nintendo and three of its games, including Starfox. It is also
recognized for its line of games for the original PlayStation,
including Croc: Legend of the Gobbos and 2 Harry Potter titles
(The Sorcerer’s Stone and The Chamber of Secrets,
respectively). The company’s founder, Jez San, joined Just Add Monsters’ board.
It would be three years before Just Add Monster released its first game, Kung
Fu Chaos.
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| Box cover art for Kung Fu Chaos, released in late February 2003 for Microsoft's Xbox. |
Kung Fu Chaos, a multiplayer party game of the beat’em up genre, was published by Microsoft on the Xbox in late February 2003. The premise behind it was a parody/homage on old Hong Kong martial arts movies from the “Kung Fu Craze” of the 1970s. This is evident in the cheesy English dialogue, the grainy film footage effect, the Hong Kong action movie archetypes represented by nine playable characters, and Carl Douglas’ famous ’70s disco song Kung Fu Fighting and the main theme from Enter the Dragon, the classic film from 1973 starring Bruce Lee; both songs are featured in the game’s soundtrack. The game itself received, for the most part, average critical reviews. Although positive points were received for a decent single-player mode, varied environments, a variety of multiplayer modes, and a multitude of mini-games, the game was criticized for low replay value, lack of depth to the simple fighting mechanics, repetitive combat, lack of difficulty, lack of music variety, average graphics, and what IGN called an “unenjoyable multiplayer experience” that occurs when four players jump into the game. The game was also panned for the character Shao Ting, the action movie director/commentator and the main character of the game that has, as Gamespot put it, a shrill, irritating voice and bad dialogue; he was widely considered to be a horrid Asian stereotype. Kung Fu Chaos has not performed commercially well, either. According to one source, up to 120,000 copies were sold. By comparison, the Xbox’s launch title, Halo: Combat Evolved, had sold around 3 million copies by the time Kung Fu Chaos was released. Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic had respectively sold 3 million and 2 million copies by 2003. The commercial setback of Kung Fu Chaos was just one of many that did not bode well financially with Just Add Monsters’ parent company, Argonaut Games.
A Ninja-Like Leap from the Ashes of Financial Collapse
Around 2004, Argonaut Games had experienced several financial troubles
due in part to the severe depletion of cash reserves and the transition from
the PlayStation to the PlayStation 2 and Xbox. After the company’s stock trade
was halted in London, the numerous staff layoffs, and the closing down of
several of its departments and studios, Argonaut Games finally closed down in
October 2004. Just Add Monsters would have met the same fate as the other
studios were it not for a management buyout that occurred one month later. In
what IGN called a ninja-like leap,
Just Add Monsters was reformed as Ninja Theory Ltd., with Tameem Antoniades as
Chief Design Ninja, Mike Ball as Chief Technology Ninja, Nina Kristensen as
Chief Development Ninja, and Jez San as Non-Executive Ninja. Around the same
time, the newly christened Ninja Theory set to resume work on a new game that
has been in development for a year and a half when the company was still Just
Add Monsters; one that was to be set for a new generation of consoles. It would
be another six months before they would be hired by
Sony to make an exclusive game for then-up-coming PlayStation 3.
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| Box cover art for Ninja Theory's PlayStation 3 exclusive title, Heavenly Sword. It was released on September 12, 2007. |
On May 16, 2005, Ninja Theory announced its first title under its name,
Heavenly Sword, as an exclusive launch title for the PlayStation 3. It
is a third person action game that centers around a tale of vengeance
featuring Nariko, a black sheep of a warrior clan sworn to protect a powerful
weapon that once belonged to an ancient deity, which is called the Heavenly
Sword. Using an overwhelming force of invading armies, an ambitious warrior
king named Bohan seeks to claim the Heavenly Sword for his own evil ends. As
the badly outnumbered clan gets slaughtered, Nariko is then force to wield the
sword in order to defend what’s left of her clan at the cost of draining her
life force since the sword itself was not meant to be wielded by
mortals. Heavily inspired by Asian martial arts cinema, the game was intended
to be a fast-paced “blockbuster action-movie experience” that is emotionally
engaging. To achieve that end, motion-capture technology was used to record
facial movements, body movements, and the voice all at the same time and a few
talents were brought on-board for the game’s music and dramatic direction. The
former was provided by Nitin Sawhney, a British music producer and club DJ who
had scored movies like The Namesake and TV shows like House,
M.D. Andy Serkis, famous for his portrayal of Gollum in Peter
Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies and the giant ape in the
same director’s 2005 remake of the famous 1930s-era film King Kong,
contributed the majority of the latter. Serkis provided the motion capture and
voice for the antagonist King Bohan while also co-writing the story and
screenplay with Tameem Antoniades and Rhianna Pratchett, known to be a writer
for the Overlord video game series. After two years of
previews, interviews, and anticipation, Heavenly Sword was finally
released for the PlayStation 3 on September 12, 2007. The
game received mostly positive reviews, mainly for its presentation, facial
animation, graphics, cinematic cutscenes, and the combat system that allows the
player to switch from three different stances in battle. The Speed Stance has
the Heavenly Sword split into two blades enabling one-on-one fast attacks, the
Power Stance turning it into a huge blade for slow but powerful attacks against
enemy defenses and armored enemies, and the Range Stace has the sword extend
from its handles with chains in order to take out large groups of
enemies in large and wide areas. There are also segments that allow the player
to take the role of Kai, Nariko’s strange but only friend. Though she cannot
fight enemies hand to hand, Kai makes up for it with her crossbow which is
useful in a couple of sniper sections. There are also segments that have Nariko
use a cannon and a pump-action rocket launcher to take out massive hordes of
invading enemies. Despite the cinematic glamour and melodramatic spectacle, the
game was criticized for its short length (6-10 hours long), repetitive
unrewarding battles that render the combat stale, poor enemy A.I., very few
enemy types with the exception of the bosses, and the lack of block and jump
buttons. Regardless, Heavenly Sword sold 533,000 copies in the
first 10 weeks, later reaching 1.4 million in total sales. It would be a couple
of years before Ninja Theory decided to make a franchise for multiple gaming
consoles (or at least make an attempt to).
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| In this screenshot, Nariko, the protagonist of Heavenly Sword, engages in battle with a group of enemies. |
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| The antagonist of Heavenly Sword, King Bohan (voiced and motion-captured by Andy Serkis), sits on his throne. |
A Franchise That Never Became One
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| Box cover art for Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, released on October 5, 2010 for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. |
In August 2009, Ninja Theory announced a partnership on a new
multiplatform game with Japanese publisher Namco Bandai Games at Germany’s
GamesCom. That new game is an action adventure platformer called Enslaved:
Odyssey to the West, set for release in 2010 on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox
360. Loosely based on the 14th century Chinese novel Journey to the
West, the game is set in a post-apocalyptic America populated by robots,
more than a century after an unknown war that involved the said robots ravaged
the world. The story itself follows a pair of would-be slaves that escaped
robot captivity, the brutish loner Monkey and the tech-savy Trip. After their
escape, Trip placed a modified slave control device on Monkey’s head because
she needs his immense physical strength in order to return to her home. This
ties Monkey to Trip so that if she dies or he strays to far from her, he dies
as well. A few key players in the development of Heavenly Sword returned
to work on Enslaved as well, notably Nitin Sawhney for the
musical score and Andy Serkis to provide the dramatic direction as well as the
voice and motion-capture animation for Monkey. Alex Garland, author
of the novel The Beach and screenwriter for the 2002
horror film 28 Days Later and Neill Blomkamp’s film
adaptation of the video game franchise Halo that never
saw production, co-wrote Enslaved‘s story with Tameem Antoniades. Enthusiasm
for the game’s potential success appeared high when it was first announced as
evident in the following quotes from an IGN
article:
“Ninja Theory’s first title exemplified their incredible talent and
ability to deliver a high-quality, cinematic and captivating gameplay
experience. With producers from our North American office working closely with
such a strong European development studio, we will be able to create a
blockbuster title with strong pan-Western sensibilities and appeal for a global
gaming audience.”-Makoto Iwai, executive vice president and chief operating
officer at NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc.
“This new project pushes our core strengths of rich story-telling,
cutting-edge technology and exciting gameplay beyond anything we have created
before. The support of NAMCO BANDAI combined with the skills and talent we have
nurtured over the years means that players are going to be in for a truly deep
and memorable experience.”-Nina Kristensen, co-founder and chief development
ninja, Ninja
Theory Ltd.
That enthusiasm, reinforced by the game’s high profile status, would
later be diminished after its release on October 5, 2010. Enslaved received
positive review scores for its story, cutscenes, facial and body
animation, boss battles, chase scenes, the developing non-romantic relationship
between Monkey and Trip, and its unique environmental take on apocalyptic
worlds. Ruined buildings are littered with plant-life wrapped around a majority
of man-made structures and sprouting out of the ground, something not usually
seen in the grey dreary landscapes (which are seen near the end of the game)
found in most apocalyptic tales. However, the game is marred by its short
length, linearity, too simplistic platforming, limited versatility in combat
gameplay, frame rate issues (made more apparent in the PlayStation 3 version),
glitches during cutscenes, and unresolved ending. Although these negative
aspects did not affect the review scores, the sales of Enslaved have
been less than hoped by Namco Bandai Games and Ninja Theory. Between the
release date and December 31, 2010, only 460,000 copies were sold in Japan,
North America, and Europe, with 138,000 copies for the PlayStation 3 sold
during the first ten weeks of release. These sales are a stark contrast to
other Namco products; by the end of 2010, the 2009 fighting game Tekken
6 had sold 1.08 million copies in the U.S. alone; God Eater
Burst and Gundam Musou 3, two of Namco’s Japan-only
release games, had respectively sold 460,000 and 430,000 copies, making them
best sellers by the standards of Japanese games released only in Japan. The
poor sales of Enslaved have been officially blamed by Namco
Bandai Games on
the busy holiday period; in other words, the timing of the game’s release was
bad. Other theories (at least as I understand them) have suggested
otherwise; an
entry on The Guardian’s Games blog suggested that Enslaved was
just an old-fashioned single player game, something that does not cut it with
today’s gaming market anymore. Despite the climb in sales to 730,000 copies by
March 2011 and the release of a downloadable side quest featuring a
non-playable character in the game, any hopes of a sequel have faded and Ninja
Theory lost its chance of expansion. Although it cannot be confirmed, it
is rumored that fans of Capcom’s popular Devil May Cry franchise
are partially blamed for the poor sales of Enslaved due to
their disapproval of the Japanese game company’s controversial move
of hiring Ninja Theory to remake/reboot it, a move that would make Ninja
Theory a target of an Internet backlash.
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| In this screenshot of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Monkey engages in battle with a pair of robots. |
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| Monkey (left) and Trip (right), the two protagonists of Enslaved: Odyssey to the West. |
Stepping into the Spotlight of Internet Infamy
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| Promotional art for DmC: Devil May Cry, a new game in a line of one of Capcom's most popular franchises currently under development by Ninja Theory, which is due to be released sometime this year. |
On September 15, 2010, Capcom, the Japanese publisher famous for
its Street Fighter, Mega Man, Resident Evil,
and Devil May Cry franchises, announced at a pre-Tokyo
Game Show press event that they have hired Ninja Theory to develop a new game
for the Devil May Cry franchise. More details on the
announcement can be found in this Gamespot article.
When the trailer for the new Devil May Cry(currently referred to
as DmC: Devil May Cry) was released, an Internet backlash from the
fans had erupted and the rest is history. Everything I learned about DmC:
Devil May Cry can be found in my previous entries. The
first one covered my personal comparisons of previous Devil May Cry games to
the remake/reboot and the controversy itself, the second covers a few bits
of information revealed at last year’s Gamescom, another
post contains links to videos of gameplay from previous Devil May Cry games, trailers for the new DmC, and (just recently) trailers released in December that I
posted for comparison purposes, another entry covered updates
made at last year’ Tokyo Game Show, another
covered a few more updates revealed just last month, and the
last one expresses my personal doubts as to whether or not the whole issue is
worth discussing anymore. Having gotten all of that out of the way, I would
like to take the time to share information I have uncovered via the game sites
MobyGames and allgame about the three founders of Ninja Theory: Mike Ball, Nina
Kristensen, and Tameem Antoniades. What follows are lists of games in which
they have been credited in their careers to date and what their roles were
around the time those games were released, including those before they
even founded Just Add Monsters.
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| Mike Ball, currently Chief Technical Ninja at Ninja Theory |
- Enslaved: Odyssey
to the West (2010), Namco Bandai Games America Inc. (technical
director)
- Heavenly
Sword (2007), Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. (Chief
Technical Ninja)
- Kung Fu Chaos (2003),
Microsoft Game Studios (game concept, technical director)
- Primal (2003),
Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd. (unknown)
- Dig Dug Deeper (2001),
Infogrames Europe SA (special thanks)
- This is
Football (1999), Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd. (unknown)
- MediEvil (1998),
Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. (technologies management)
- Beast Wars: Transformers (1997),
Hasbro Interactive, Inc. (programmer, technologies group manager)
- Frogger (1997),
Hasbro Interactive, Inc. (technologies group manager)
- Defcon 5 (1995),
Data East USA, Inc. (additional programming)
- Pinocchio (1995),
Buena Vista Games, Inc., Virgin Interactive Entertainment, Inc. (unknown)
- Diggers (1994),
Millennium Interactive Ltd. (unknown)
- James Pond 3:
Operation Starfish (1994), Millennium Interactive Ltd. (unknown)
- Mr. Blobby (1994),
Millennium Interactive Ltd. (unknown)
- Super Troll
Islands (1994), American Softworks Corporation (unknown)
- James Pond 2:
Codename: RoboCod (1993), Ocean Software Ltd., Millennium
Interactive Ltd. (unknown)
- Morph (1993),
Sony Electronic Publishing Ltd. (unknown)
- The Super Aquatic Games (1993), The Sales Curve Ltd., (unknown)
 |
Nina Kristensen, currently Chief Development Ninja at Ninja Theory
|
- Enslaved: Odyssey
to the West (2010), Namco Bandai Games America Inc. (story, dramatic
direction, creative director)
- Heavenly
Sword (2007), Sony Computer Entertainment America, Inc. (Chief Design
Ninja, story, screenplay)
- Kung Fu Chaos (2003),
Microsoft Game Studios (game concept, design director, programmer)
- Dig Dug Deeper (2001),
Infogrames Europe SA (special thanks)
- Beast Wars:
Transformers (1997), Hasbro Interactive, Inc. (programmer, game
design)
At the moment, this is the best information about Ninja Theory I can
find on the Internet. If you, the reader, notice any errors, missing pieces of
information, or would like to contribute additional information that I may have
missed, feel free to post that information in the comment section below. By the
time you finish reading this, it is now up to you to decide whether or not
Ninja Theory is really qualified to develop the new Devil May Cry video
game.
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· Enslaved: Odyssey to the West | Fan Review of Enslaved
[…] Most in-game movie game cinematics suck, and it'd be a good proving ground for your game design.Squandered potential, and I'm not sure who exactly is to blame. Heavenly Sword felt rushed. This gam…felt rushed. This game felt rushed. I want to "believe" that there is real talent in this studio, […]
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