LV video game firm signs deal with Sega

Jennifer Shubinski

Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2005 | 10:58 a.m.

Local video game company Petroglyph has signed a deal with Sega Partners to create a series of military and sci-fi themed computer games.

Petroglpyh was founded by three programmers shortly after video game giant Electronic Arts closed Westwood Studios, its Las Vegas division, in early 2003, and consolidated its video game operations at its Redwood City, Calif. headquarters.

Petroglyph now employs 31 people and is currently completing the video game Star Wars: Empire at War for Lucas Arts. Most Petroglyph employees are former employees of Westwood Studios, where they worked on popular games such as Blade Runner, Eye of the Beholder, Dune 2 and the hugely successful Command & Conquer series.

Michael Legg, one of Petroglyph's founders, said the company will now have to ramp up hiring. He expects the company to grow to between 40 and 50 people.

"We will grow to being a two-team, two-project studio -- which will be a definite challenge for us," Legg said via e-mail. "We plan to continue to make games with both LucasArts (LucasFilm) and SEGA, since they are both excellent partners and we value our relationships with them."

Legg said his company's business model has always included working on two projects simultaneously.

Under the terms of the worldwide deal, Petroglyph, in partnership with Sega of America Inc. and Sega Europe Ltd., will create modern military and si-fi themed real-time strategy games (RTS). Sega will manage all marketing and distribution activities. Financial terms of the partnership were not disclosed.

"Sega is moving aggressively toward a leadership position in the RTS category and the team at Petroglyph is behind some of the finest games in the genre," Simon Jeffery, president and chief operating officer of Sega of America said in a statement.

The Las Vegas' company's specialty is real-time strategy games, which can be played by a single player on one computer, or over the Internet or a local area network (LAN) against human opponents. Rather than the traditional turn-based game where 'one player moves, then another player moves,' real-time strategy games allow players to battle against each other, or against computer-controlled (artificial intelligence) players at the same time.

"Our goal is to create a new intellectual property that is so fun that it will have many titles created for it," Legg said.

Both companies will announce product and release details at a later date.