Gas Powered Games is a video game developer located in Redmond, Washington. The development studio was started in May 1998 by Chris Taylor, creator of Total Annihilation, and several other ex-Cavedog Entertainment employees.
Gas Powered Games' launch title was the 2002 3D role-playing video game Dungeon Siege, published by Microsoft Game Studios. Apart from its custom graphics engine, it also featured simple and innovative RPG rules and mechanics that made it stand out from a market already crowded with sword & sorcery/fantasy role-playing games.
In 2003 Gas Powered released a stand-alone expansion pack for the game, Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna. The expansion was co-developed by Mad Doc Software and again published by Microsoft Game Studios. In August 2005, Gas Powered released its sequel to Dungeon Siege, Dungeon Siege II.
In March 2006, Take-Two Interactive purchased the full publishing rights of the Dungeon Siege series, ending the four-year Microsoft partnership with Gas Powered Games.
GPG released Supreme Commander (SupCom), a real-time strategy game in February 2007, published by THQ. Announced in the August 2005 issue of PC Gamer magazine, Chris Taylor touted SupCom as the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation as TA remains the intellectual property of Atari. As a "stand alone expansion", Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance was announced in June 2007, for a November release.
In May 2007, Gas Powered Games announced a partnership with Sega to work on an original RPG. On July 6, 2007, the original RPG was announced as Space Siege. The game was released on August 12, 2008 to generally middling reviews.
In January 2008, GPG announced a new project, Demigod, to be released sometime in early 2009. It is an Action RPG / RTS hybrid inspired by the Warcraft III mod Defense of the Ancients. Demigod was released on 14 April 2009 in the USA.
On November 12, 2008, Square Enix announced that it would be partnering with Gas Powered Games to create Supreme Commander 2. The game was released in March 2010 for the PC and Xbox 360, with a version for Mac OS X following in September 2010.
On February 24, 2011, it was announced that Gas Powered Games would be taking over development on the upcoming RTS game Age of Empires Online, replacing Robot Entertainment on the project.
Gas Powered Games has also announced plans to create a real-time strategy game named Kings and Castles, which will use the game engine from Supreme Commander 2.
| Title | Year | Platform |
|---|---|---|
| Dungeon Siege | 2002 | PC, MAC |
| Dungeon Siege: Legends of Aranna | 2003 | PC |
| Dungeon Siege II | 2005 | PC |
| Dungeon Siege II: Broken World | 2006 | PC |
| Supreme Commander | 2007 | PC, Xbox 360 |
| Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance | 2007 | PC |
| Space Siege | 2008 | PC |
| Demigod | 2009 | PC |
| Supreme Commander 2 | 2010 | PC, Xbox 360 |
| Age of Empires Online | 2011 | PC |
| Kings and Castles | In development | ? |
Famous quotes containing the words gas and/or games:
“one pale woman all alone,
The daylight kissing her wan hair,
Loitered beneath the gas lamps’ flare,
With lips of flame and heart of stone.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination.”
—William Burroughs (b. 1914)