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Thursday, September 3, 2009

Incredibly inspiring story of the start and success of 5TH Cell. Also discusses plans for the Wii and Xbox Live

The Seattle Times posted a story today detailing the humble beginnings of 5TH Cell, revealing some interesting backstory of the development studio behind Scribblenauts.

Turns out 5TH Cell began as just two people who met one another online. Though they initially wanted to make bigger online games they found that their lack of funds held them back, forcing them to start small and work on mobile games. After signing with some publishers they started to see the cash flow a bit and set their sights on the DS. Nintendo initially rejected their first "Drawn to Life" concept, but almost a year later changed their mind after a second pitch. DtL went on to sell a million copies, more than enough to fund their next projects. Inbetween this all they saw growing and shrinking in their tiny development studio, sometimes forced to lay people off when money was low.

Their story is literally that of a Cinderella Story, a rags to riches tale of four guys who didn't even meet until they signed a deal with THQ at E3. It's a really incredible story, one you don't hear too much of nowadays.

Towards the end it's easy to miss this last bit of interesting info. We know 5TH Cell wants to break out of the handheld market...but where are they most likely to be headed? Well...

THQ agreed to publish the title, which sold a million copies and funded what's now a 34-person studio putting the finishing touches on "Scribblenauts" and aiming to release games for the Wii and Xbox Live in the next year or two.

Scribblenauts is bound to propel them even higher on the game development food chain, making them a studio we should definitely keep an eye on in the future.

7 comments:

  1. Maxwell summons "pizza."
    Maxwell places the pizza under the bridge.
    Troll is lured back to his home under the bridge, eats the pizza and falls asleep.
    Maxwell gets the starite.
    Level complete!

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  2. Congrats, Anon! You just defeated the troll. Starite get!

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  3. Xbox and Wii, called it!
    anyway, wanna make games too, doubt i could pull of what he did, unless i get techy friends who agree to do all non-creative activity

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  4. As irrelevant as this may be I just wanna say Ive never posted on this site but have had it on my favourites since the site started, I used to run the ScribblenautsDS twitter page and was affiliated with sirpenquin, anyways enough about me.
    I wanna say that this site is a cinderella story in itself. It started as just a man writing about a game he was interested and has grown into the must favourite site if your all about scribblenauts. This site pwns, its by fsr the best database of all things scribblenauts on the net.

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  5. Maxwell Summons Master Chief and adds steak to him and feeds him to a lion.

    Owned. Now stop Trolling.

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  6. I find it slightly humorous that you yourself talk like you're a 2-year-old. Besides, if you are not a fan of this website (or Scribblenauts, for that matter), how did you find it in the first place? Did you actually search for this website just so you could troll?

    ...

    >_>

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  7. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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