Bigpoint Brings GTA-Style Open World Gaming to the PC Browser with Poisonville
New free-to-play MMO game Poisonville focuses on core gamers
HAMBURG -- After almost two years in development and a $2.5 million budget, Bigpoint is bringing a 3D open world game to the free-to-play, browser-based business model. Poisonville officially went live during GamesCom 2010 in Cologne. The Hamburg-based developer and publisher's latest 3D action MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) sets new standards in the browser-game industry. The game’s producer disccuses the new game in this exclusive video interview from the publisher’s global headquarters in Hamburg.
"With Poisonville our goal of revolutionizing the browser-game market has reached completion," explains Heiko Hubertz, founder and CEO of Bigpoint. "A team of top-notch developers has done some great technical and graphical work, and of course we're rightfully proud of that."
The game is set in a fully 3D world of a quality which, up to now, has only been attainable in PC or console games - all with no download or installation, directly in the players' browsers. To make that possible, the graphical programming interface, the 100% Java-based jMonkeyEngine (jME), was severely modified and adapted to the game's needs, requiring an incredible amount of technical savvy.
This is the first browser game animated using motion capture, a technique which is commonly used in console games to film the movements of real actors and translate them into images. Day and night modes, sophisticated artificial intelligence, customizable vehicles and personally designed characters are only a few of the game's many groundbreaking features.
Players are free to explore all aspects of the huge fictional city of Poisonville, including many attractions and shopping possibilities. They can navigate through approximately 600 quests and interact with other players on seven different maps each containing up to 1,500 players (a total of 5,000 per server instance), and participate in battles in the trailer park, where the city's four gangs go up against each other in exciting PvP battles.
Poisonville's innovations are clear from the very beginning: Players can plunge into Poisonville by simply clicking the "Play now" button. Before they even register, they can determine their character's appearance and enjoy an awesome comic strip that tells the Poisonville background story. Then the tutorial teaches them the basic game functions (commands, picking up and using objects, driving, etc.) and finally they must ally themselves with one of the city's four gangs. Only then must the player decide whether or not to register a free game account.
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About the Author
John Gaudiosi
Editor-in-Chief
John Gaudiosi has been covering videogames for the past 20 years for outlets like The Washington Post, CNET, Wired Magazine and CBS.com. He has focused on the convergence of entertainment and videogames for outlets like Video Business, Home Media Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Hollywood Reporter and Variety. He currently serves as Editor-in-Chief of Gamerlive.TV and is also a freelance game columnist for Reuters and writes for outlets like Forbes.com, NVISION, Official PlayStation Magazine, EGM Now, Geek Monthly, PrimaGames.com, and Yahoo! Games. John also serves as the video game expert for NBC in Washington D.C. and has produced videogame documentaries for The History Channel and Starz Entertainment. John was named one of the Top 50 Game Journalists in the world by Next-Gen.biz in 2007. He is the co-author of Scholastic Books' How to Get into Videogames, Prima Publishing's Madden: Twenty Years of Videogame Football and Electronic Arts: The Official History.
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