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Taldren
1520 Nutmeg Place #250
Costa Mesa, CA 92626-2501
(714) 438 - 1042
Fax: (714) 438 - 2469
Taldren, the studio behind the award-winning Starfleet Command series, was unofficially founded by Erik Bethke, Zachary Drummond and Sean Dumas in 1996.
This year, Taldren's first major project is "Black9" for the personal computer and Xbox™ video game system from Microsoft. Developed in partnership with Majesco, Edison, N.J., one of the fastest-growing publishers of interactive entertainment. Black9 is scheduled for release in fall 2003.
In Black9, intense character development meets tactical action game play. The story line: In 2080, nine powerful cartels known as Illuminati are engaged in a struggle for the control of mankind. Motivated by their own special interests, these manipulative Illuminati head towards a perilous endgame, and players find themselves in the role of a mercenary walking the gray line of right and wrong. Black9 is a Machiavellian world full of greediness and betrayal, and players will need to be resourceful in order to stay true to their own code.
Black9 is being developed on the acclaimed Unreal Warfare engine with support of MathEngine's Karma physics. Set in a third-person perspective, players are equipped with hi-tech gadgetry, weapons, and cybernetics, and can acquire specific abilities through their game play experience. Broadband multi-player support and cooperative play is also planned across all platforms.
Additional platforms for Black9 are also under consideration by Majesco and will be announced at a later date.
TALDREN'S ROOTS
Bethke, Drummond and Dumas first met in 1995 at the Dreamers Guild, a Chatsworth, Calif.-based game development company. The Dreamers Guild produced such titles as "Faery Tale Adventure 2," "Inherit the Earth," and "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," an adventure game based on a Harlan Ellison short story.
While at the Dreamers Guild, they worked on "No Mouth." Critically acclaimed by the press, the game was named Adventure Game of the Year from Computer Gaming World. Later, "No Mouth" won the Computer Game Developers' Association's award for the year's "Best Conversion from Linear Media".
The three also worked on several client/server games to be published on MPGNet. These included a baseball league simulation, a cyberpunk FPS/strategy game and a user extensible fantasy RPG based on the Mud Object-Oriented (MOO) technology of Pavel Curtis.
The same year the three left the Dreamers Guild in search of an opportunity to learn more software engineering skills, AI techniques and a place to develop their own distributed, user-extensible RPG. They joined Interna, Ltd. and while there worked on several unreleased titles, developing Caesars Palace W95 for Interplay Entertainment. Delivering Caesars Palace right on time opened up a door at Interplay for them.
The three left Interna in late 1997 and performed contract work for six months while developing a 3D engine and a fleshing out a distributed server design.
In the summer of 1998 they joined the 14 Degrees East division of Interplay to run the Starfleet Command project. The three were members of the internal development team at Interplay Entertainment that created the award-winning Starfleet Command.
The game was published in four languages and worldwide sales (including the value-priced Neutral Zone edition) have so far exceeded 600,000 copies.
Since then, they've released Starfleet Command Volume II and Starfleet Command: Orion Pirates. They've reworked and refined their processes for pre-production and production, as well as the documentation and demonstrations of their technologies and ideas.
According to Bethke, Drummond and Dumas:
"Starfleet Command has been and continues to be the most wonderful game project we have had the privilege to work on. We really poured our heart and soul into nailing the game mechanics and user interface in the port from Star Fleet Battles to Starfleet Command. We loved all the races, all the missions and all the detailed tactical combat of our naval starship simulator. We then started working with the fans through the message boards and with the beta testers. We really learned so much from working with real people that we feel we really have a competitive advantage in all aspects of working with the fans. We really do appreciate you! We're pretty good at what we do. We'd like to share that with you."
ERIK BETHKE
Erik Bethke was diverted from a career as a budding space scientist at the Jet Propulsion laboratory when, without explanation, he leaped sideways into a career as a game programmer.
Bethke was credited on a game as early as 1995 and as recently as 2002. He has been credited with the roles Design, Production and Programming.
Games Credited
Star Trek: Starfleet Command III (2002), Activision, Inc.
Star Trek: Starfleet Command (1999), Interplay.
Halls of the Dead - Faery Tale Adventure II (1997), Encore Software.
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream (1995), Acclaim Entertainment, Inc.
Books
"Game Development and Production" by Erik Bethke--paperback: 412 pages; February 2003, Wordware Publishing, (CD-ROM edition available).
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