Singularity Games

Dreamcatcher Interactive, Inc. (trading as Singularity Games) is an American video game developer based at a large campus in Redwood City, California, United States. The studio's main focus according to press releases is to develop new intellectual properties.

They are also contractually assist in development of various games. Their clients in this case include EA, Activision Blizzard, Sony Interactive Entertainment and Take-Two Interactive.

History

Singularity Games was founded as Laserium Holdings' equivalent to Electronic Arts' divisions All Play/Maxis, SEED and Worldwide Studios. The studio, along with Roblox Consumer Products and Laserium Game Studios Cheltenham, were purchased by Dreamcatcher Entertainment in December 2017, shortly after Laserium Holdings' assets were acquired and merged into Old Dominion Media. RCP and LGS Cheltenham would eventually become the New York and UK studios respectively. Most of the staff from there would eventually move to the Redwood City studio.

They announced to work on numerous AAA games, two mobile titles and a seventh undisclosed project in January 2018. One of the four AAA titles were announced as Cosa Nostra, and another one was announced to be published by SEGA. Two more AAA projects were announced at PAX South, as Yip and Skylar.

The JRPG-like Moving Mountains, the previously undisclosed seventh project, was announced along with seven other games in E3 2018. At Microsoft's conference, Cosa Nostra got a full disclosure and Singularity announced four games: Vehicular Special Forces, Hired Gun (the only non-Xbox exclusive announced there), Skylar and Bionic Wars. Also in E3 2018, Singularity Games announced a partnership with DeNA, a mobile games company.

There are talks of opening up a studio in Liverpool to house ex-Bizzare Creations and SCE Studio Liverpool employees, and in Abu Dhabi with the help of Abu Dhabi Media Group. However, those plans were cancelled in September 2018.

In July 2018, shortly after the merger, between the New York studio and most of Cheltenham studio, into the Redwood City studio, the Cheltenham studio's now-previous headquarters were shut down. The studio now resides in an "average-sized open office space".

On August 2018, Singularity Games established a label; Psyclapse, where they'll released remakes of classic games. They will release two games through the label, however the games are yet to be announced. Super Ultimate Squad 2 was announced to be delayed from December 20, 2019 to Q2 2020. They also announced a proposed acquisition of the Zone of the Enders IP from Konami.

On October 21, 2018, Brittany Kurosaka, who is a part owner of Qualis and Legacy Pictures, announced to invest in the company.

On January 30, 2019, ODIMG Technologies, developers of the Mars console, filed for bankruptcy. However, the company announced that it would keep Mars Dedicated Unit running until "a sure plan has been developed". In April 2019, the group was merged into a new unit called The Outcats, established for a review process of most of its employees.

In May 2019, they laid off 20,325 employees after a major review process. Jane Schwarz also stepped down as the CEO.

In July 2019, after Dreamcatcher Entertainment was bought out by Qualis and merged into Laserium Sega Experiences, Singularity Games became part of Libum Games (formerly Laserium Game Studios), with Singularity Games Cheltenham being spun off as Lava Sports Games UK.

The "Guardian Angel" story

One day at the offices, Jane Schwarz invited Peter Smith (now Peter Smith-Schwarz) to discuss about lack of work. She found out the cause of it, which was constant abuse from his family and friends, which caused him to go into depression. She decided to take him in temporarily until everything went into a better direction. Eleven months later, Schwarz and Smith got married. This story was spread around the news and it was received positively.

Studios

Redwood City

Nicknamed "Singularity Game City", the campus consists of a motion-capture studio, twenty-two rooms for composing, fourteen video editing suites, three production studios, numerous departments with their own wings, and hotel-like apartment complexes for the employees hired from abroad. There are also facilities such as fitness rooms, theatres, coffee bars, a soccer field, a garden, and several arcades, one of them is even open to the public.

The place also has a ball pit room, a restaurant and numerous other "fun rooms", for employing people outside of the video game industry. The whole campus utilizes great amounts of bioenergy, mainly solar, wind, biogas and hydrostorage power, and next to the campus, there are planted numerous trees in a maze-like patttern. The campus is targeting to use the least amount of electricity and lower their carbon footprint as much as possible.

There is an inside joke among partners and co-developers about Singularity Games being "EA but better", due to similarity in campuses and work environment.

Corporate affairs

Due to amount of employees, there are three basic rules about working at Singularity Games, inspired by such companies as Valve and X (formerly Google X):

"If you want to work on a project with friends, feel free to do so" This was implemented in order to boost productivity.
"If you don't first succeed, make something out of it"
"Benchmark, benchmark, benchmark" Singularity Games also encourages interacting with other development teams and testing out assets before they're put in the game.

They also have some employees working remotely.

Singularity Boost

Singularity Boost is a crowdsourcing program, open to anyone residing outside the United States and Japan, allowing gaming enthusiasts who want to get into the games development / designing industry to submit their unique ideas to Singularity Games (the Redwood City studio, to be exact) which could then be developed into games. They allow remote working for volunteer developers and auditioners.

In addition, 25% of the proceeds, from the sales of games who pass the audition, will go to charity, usually gaming-focused charities such as Special Effect and Child's Play. The other 25% will go to the teams who develop them and the rest will be kept by the pitchers, with a chance of working with them on future projects.

For ideas in Japan, they assist PlayStation C.A.M.P. in development of the games.

Development teams

Main article: Singularity Games development teams

Singularity Game Jam

Every year, for two months, there is a game jam where people take time off development of current projects and work on minigames according to themes. In 2018, the first Game Jam was about nostalgic atmosphere, so teams had to make SNES-like games.

The contending games are published on Singularity Games' website and, for consoles, marketplaces like Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, and the winning game will be developed into a full-fledged version.

Games