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Relic Entertainment

From Encyclopedia Hiigara

Relic Entertainment is a game development company based in Vancouver, British Columbia. Relic both created the Homeworld universe and developed Homeworld and its sequel.

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Contents

[edit] Brief History

Relic was started in 1997 by Alex Garden and Luke Moloney, to begin development of their new game Homeworld. The game immediately impressed the gaming community at 1998's E3 and continued to do so at 1999's. When it was released it was a critical success, and won several awards, giving Relic a spotlight in the gaming industry.

When Relic was approached by Sierra Entertainment for an expansion pack to the popular Homeworld, they declined, instead beginning work on the game Impossible Creatures for Microsoft. Barking Dog Studios, which contained several members of Homeworld's development team, and shared an office location with RelicSSource: Rob Cunningham's presentation of the company's history at the Relic Open House 2007 , was instead tasked with the expansion, creating Homeworld's so-called "stand-alone expansion pack" Homeworld: Cataclysm

They did return to the series shortly after Cataclysm's release. In 2001, Relic released a trailer for the early stages of a sequel on which they had begun early story development shortly after Homeworld's release. The trailer attracted Homeworld fans everywhere and Relic was once again the face of Homeworld. However, when Homeworld 2 was released after a troublesome development, in which the game was radically redesigned several times, it failed to be the hoped-for financial success, but also failed to score as high with the critics.

Soon thereafter, Relic was bought by THQ inc. and Alex Garden left the company to work on other projects under a clause of non-competition.

In 2004, Relic released Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War which became a huge financial success, ensured further cooperation with both THQ and Games Workshop, and would be expanded with three add-ons.

2006 saw both the release of The Outfit for Microsoft's Xbox 360, which received mixed reviews, and Company of Heroes, which not only proved to be a large success, but also impressed critics, scoring even higher than the critically acclaimed HomeworldSSource: http://www.metacritic.org/games/pc/scores/ and winning several awards.

Year later, in 2007 Relic released stand-alone expansion pack to Company of Heroes, titled Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts and announced third and final expansion pack to Dawn of War series, and Company of Heroes Online, MMORTS which is going to be released in China by 2008.

[edit] Popularity

Relic is unquestionably the more popular of the Homeworld series' two developers (itself and Barking Dog Studios). This may be in part due to its unique art choices, as well as its willingness to push the boundaries of known gaming conventions (Homeworld was the first RTS game with a fully 3D environment).

[edit] Rights to the Homeworld Franchise

In November 2007 THQ, the owner of Relic, acquired the Homeworld series copyrights. After that event, fans began speculations on Homeworld 3, however it is still unconfirmed that Relic has begun any work on the continuation of the Homeworld Franchise.

[edit] Management

[edit] Gamography

[edit] Related Companies

[edit] Sources

[edit] See Also

[edit] External Links

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