Ritualistic

An explosion more significant than badman's brain farts is set to descend on Europe, according to MumboJumbo President Paul Jensen, who has given some casual comments to GamesIndustry.biz on the state of the Europe market.

Jensen reveals that casual games from the company are set to be localised in order to explode into European territories "in a big way". Expect to see casual games hitting formats such as the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP, and le crème de la crème (oh my god it's French), Xbox Live Arcade.

A sign of things to come for Ritual perhaps? For more, read the article.
 

..well, mainly mumbo jumbo, really. Anywho, over the weekend, we had a chance to sit down with the Levelord and discuss last week's major news of MumboJumbo assimilating Ritual into its ever-growing casual collective. The interview covers how the deal actually came about, what this all means for Ritual going forward, why we should be excited, and, naturally, SiN Episodes. Here's a clip:

What kind of games can we expect from Ritual in the future? Most people associate casual games with Solitaire...

We’re starting simple, of course, and Mumbo Jumbo has a few projects that have been waiting for attention and we are also crafting our own new ideas. The casual games market is a relatively new one, and it is growing at a phenomenal rate due to its focus on the general population rather than the smaller hardcore, genre-specific gamers. We anticipate designing a wide spectrum of games across many different platforms. Like I said earlier, except to see our games on Xbox Live Arcade, the PlayStation Network, the Wii, handhelds like the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP, and, of course, the PC.

Much will depend on the market’s demand, and also our own ability to set new trends and open innovative spaces within the casual game market.

Read the full interview to find out much more about Ritual's future.
 

If you're like most hardcore gamers, you won't really be familiar with MumboJumbo. You might have played one of their games, but probably can't remember the name of it. So thankfully GamaSutra comes to the rescue here with a rather thorough interview with MumboJumbo's secretary general Mark Cottam, covering pretty much everything there is to know about what the company does and how it operates. Here's a slice:

All right. So that's just on the development side, but as far as publishing, you obviously publish – as far as retail anyway, and perhaps online also – games that were developed outside of MumboJumbo, right?

Mark Cottam: We do. We've branded MumboJumbo as a developer and publisher of "premium casual games." Everything that is either developed internally or being licensed and published into retail falls into the casual game category, and a lot of our content does come form the other developers in the casual games space.

Mark also mentions that MumboJumbo is currently looking to break into the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS markets, which would certainly go along with their multi-platformed reasoning for buying Ritual. And yes, he does roll around in a giant monkey ball, at least in the office. Click here to read the rest.

On a somewhat similar note, we're going to have an interview with the Ritual wonder twins Levelord and Robert Atkins in the next few days, so stay tuned for that.
 

GameDaily BIZ managed to get ahold of MumboJumbo's prime minister Mark Cottam to shed some light on the reasons for the acquisition of Ritual Entertainment and what their plans are for the company:

...having an experienced and disciplined developer like Ritual [...] allows us to increase the amount of original IP that we can bring to the market at any given time period. So the primary reason [for the deal] is to expand our resources so that we can better exploit our IP that we have and to create new IP for the casual games market."

There's also this rather disappointing bit about the future of the SiN Episodes series:

"If there's an opportunity to have them do something on the SiN episodes, we would look at that, but that will not be the focus of the company. The combined companies will focus exclusively on casual, unless opportunities present themselves that we think are strategic from a business standpoint... Again, I wouldn't close the door on [traditional games] but that's not the primary focus."

Captain Cottam also mentions that newfangled services like Xbox Live Arcade would among the target platforms for the studio and if that service's present line-up is anything to go on, expect small, but nonetheless action-packed, releases to come out of the Ritual Cave. Click here to read the entire interview.
 

Family reunions are fun, right? Well, you may remember that in early 2001, Ritual Entertainment announced that it was deporting its then-CEO Ron Dimant to a new island to create MumboJumbo along with then-president Mark Dochtermann. It seems that the venture paid off in more ways than one, as today MumboJumbo announced that it is not only awesome at creating so-called "premium casual games", but also that it has acquired Ritual Entertainment, merging the Tribe into its operations and (re-)creating a big, though somewhat more casual, happy family.

The press release is a little unspecific about Ritual's immediate future and has no information on SiN Episodes at all, but hopefully Ritual's new supreme commander (no, not that one, this one) will have some information for us soon. Here is the obligatory marketing speak, with an extra dash of trademark symbols:

“MumboJumbo™ established the casual games category at retail, and the purchase of Ritual Entertainment™ is consistent with our strategy to bring high-quality casual game content to the major platforms,” said Ron Dimant, who left his post as chief executive officer of Ritual Entertainment™ in 2001 to found MumboJumbo™. “The combination of Ritual’s™ high-end, multi-platform expertise and our own industry-leading publishing model will set the bar for quality and sophistication in casual games and create a major industry powerhouse. The casual games market is beginning to mature as evidenced by an increase in consumer expectations. Ultimately, the companies providing the best content will win, which is why we are investing so heavily in the development of technology and original IP.”

Click here to read the full press release. Who knows, maybe the next Luxor will have you launching balls at Elexis Sinclaire's oversized chest for that extra bit of bounciness.
 

Despite badman the one who was a year older on the 14th, it is me the one who is losing his memory. Be sure to send your belated birthday wishes to badman, who celebrated a landmark one the other day.

Sorry pal, and Happy Birthday + 3.
 

Long-time Ritual vice president and co-owner Tom "ParadoX" Mustaine last night announced that he had departed Ritual and is now heading up a new project for the Cyberathlete Professional League titled Severity. Severity will be built from the ground up to support competitive multiplayer gaming and tournaments and such, while being based on id Software technology.

Incidentally, this move also leaves Robert Atkins and Richard "Levelord" Gray as the two remaining owners of Ritual Entertainment. Whether or not this will result in an exponential surge of cleavage in the company's games is still up in the air.
 

With all the recent rumors circulating around the internet suggesting that Ritual had fireballed spectacularly after attempting nuclear fission in their basement, we can now confirm that this is not the case. On the contrary, following Steve Nix's departure to serve as id Software's director of business development, the Tribe has just announced that long-time tribesman and lead programmer Ken Harward has taken over as the studio's director and will be overseeing business development from here on:

"I'm really looking forward to helping guide Ritual," said Ken. "2007 looks to be a great year as we finish up our current projects and start some exciting new ones. I'm excited to have the opportunity to expand my leadership role within the company, and I'm flattered by the huge amount of support everyone in the tribe has shown. There's a ton of positive energy in the halls."

You can check out the full press release, full of riveting quotes and unforeseen plot twists, right here. It probably won't be too long until we find out more about what exactly it is that's going on inside the Cave, so keep checking back at least once a week.
 

We don't usually post on people leaving Ritual, but I figure this one warrants a special mention. As of this week, Ritual's QA superninja Michael Russell is no longer with the company. Michael regularly kept an eye on not only our forums, but on message boards all over the interweb to help people with whatever technical issues they had with SiN Episodes: Emergence, while also handling email tech support and making sure Ritual's in-development projects got a proper QA treatment.

On top of that, he also set aside time to shed more light on the intricacies of game development and the often-overlooked part of quality assurance, which I'm sure was appreciated by many members of the community. There's no doubt Michael will be missed around here and we would like to thank him for his involvement with the community and wish him the best of luck with his future endeavours.

Related, Michael has generously allowed us to post the next three installments of his SiN / USK series that he's already written - look for the next one to go up shortly.
 

Michael Russell has posted the final question of the week this year, yeah, badman can't read asking for thoughts on the oft-debated Steam delivery system could be made better.

If you could pick three things that would improve Steam, what would they be and why?

Reply now, and keep it civil folks!
 

It's been exactly one year since the Levelord's last birthday, which means that today he turns a young 118 years old. Happy birthday from Ritualistic, Lord! Also, his mustache says hi.
 

In what is going to be the final installment of the Question of the Week for the year, Ritual's QA supercomputer Michael Russell asks about the impending console armageddon (consolegeddon, if you will) in this unbelievable cliffhanger:

Which "next-generation" console is going to win this particular console war: the Xbox 360, the PLAYSTATION® 3 or the Wii? Why?

Before you head in there ready to spew forth fanboyisms and flamebait, rest assured that ass-clownery and being a douche will result in us doing terrible things to your account. With that in mind, share your pearls of wisdom.
 

In their latest poll, the lads at GamingGroove are searching for the greatest game designer ever in the history of ever and for some reason or other, the Levelord is on the list of possible choices (don't tell them he doesn't actually design games). Now, at the time of writing, CliffyB is leading the pack, but it's already been established that Levelord > CliffyB, so head on over there and let them know what's what. Thanks ran93r.
 

Another week, another question. In this latest one, Ritual's QA Congressman Michael Russell asks the community to create motivational posters that would be appropriate for SinTEK's chief executive vixen Elexis Sinclaire to use on her employees:

If you were going to be the interior designer on a new SiNTek tower, and were requested by Elexis herself to create or find appropriate "motivational posters" to hang in the workplace, what posters would you put up?

The thread even comes with an example, so fire up your Photoshop / Gimp / whatever engines and get going!
 

That Elly Kedward is one crazy lady! And somehow, that game still had guns in it.