Friday 5 February 2016

DevBlog #6 - Starting Atom Republic

What a week we've had! In our last DevBlog, we introduced everyone to our latest addition to Atom Universe, the Arcade Plaza and Yesterday, we released the first teaser of the Arcade Plaza giving you a quick glimpse of what's to come. 

We've had an absolutely amazing response from the community and this continues to drive our passion to bring Atom Universe to everyone! 

In this week's DevBlog, we'll be taking a little step back from the production side of things (as the team focuses on finishing off the Arcade Plaza) and looking back at our origins and how Atom Republic is where it is today, who better to talk about this than our very own CEO Tanguy Dewavrin.



“How did Atom Republic happen?

After 15 years of working in the video games industry I wanted to branch out and start doing my own thing! While working at Doublesix Studio, I was introduced this virtual world known as PlayStation Home. At this time we had released Burn Zombie Burn and we created the Burn Zombie Burn Lobby for PlayStation Home. At that moment something clicked, PlayStation Home was this incredible experience for developers, you were able to add your own content, work closely with the community and get instant feedback.

Normally within the games industry, you can spend anywhere between 2 to 4 years making a video game and once it’s released you’re limited to how much you can actually change based on community feedback, or you would simply move on to the next game. With PlayStation Home, it was different, it was something new, it was something exciting and it was something I wanted to pursue.

With PlayStation Home you can develop a piece of content within a week, release it in-game, get feedback from the community and improve it. 

And so Atom Republic was born!

While working on PlayStation Home, we released a whole wealth of content ranging from clothes, pets, dance moves, private spaces through to locomotion objects.



By working closely with the community, we were able to build upon these ideas and we could give the community content they truly wanted, but that’s not all… Our community had some great ideas too. For example, the 2-player dances and Hip-Hop moves were great ideas from the community, we were able to take these ideas and make them into a reality. Oh, not forgetting about the birthday hat for Alphazone4 and the brain jacket for the Brainiac Challenges.  

Those were the days…



When we found out that PlayStation Home was coming to an end, it was very saddening… We had invested a lot of time and effort into this virtual world and we really liked it.


Towards the end we asked our community where they wanted to go next via a questionnaire and we noticed a gap in the market, an exciting opportunity to something new and thrilling for the next generation of consoles.”

To be continued... 

5 comments:

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  3. I remember the story with how Atom Republic started very well! That Burn Zombie Burn space brings back some nice PS Home memories too. I remember saving the version that didn't have the jail for a long time too. We used it for multiple PS Home events as if it was a private server since that version was no longer accessible from the Navigator. I remember Atom Republic being the first 3rd party developer to bring hip hop dance LMOs to PS Home and I will always remember that. They quickly followed that with the 80s, 90s, and other famous dance moves too. My friend Burbie even mentioned in an article she wrote for HomeStation Magazine (with which of course I agreed) that Atom Republic seemed to be one of the more "trendy" PS Home developers. I definitely remember the AZ4 hat and of course the Brainiac jacket and had both of them. I'm anxiously awaiting my Brainiac brain that DJ promised me for AU too. With the trend setting history that Atom Republic had during it's days of development for PS Home, I am confident of the great things that they will do with Atom Universe. So much progress has been made on the game and the pics and video of the Arcade Plaza have definitely raised more excitement for the game too! :)

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  4. I was a bit of a late-comer to PS Home (2013) so it's nice to hear from the developers and artists their personal story of how they came to be a part of that wonderful place. Thanks for sharing this Atom Republic!

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