LATE last month, warner bros announced it was closing three of its game development studios in a “Strategic Change of Direction”: WB Games San Diego, Player FIRST Studios, and Monolith Productions. At a time when the games industry is racked with layoffs and studio closures, the barrage of dispiriting headlines can be numbing. But the shutdown of monolith cut through the noise, sparking fresh shock and outrage at the industry’s slash and burn approach to cost cutting. There are numerous reasons for this, but amon them was a pervading belief that monolith would be Around Forever. “I don’t think I ever considered the possibilities that it would shut down one day,” Says Garrett Price, One of Monolith’s Seven Founding Members.
True to its name, monolith was a singular presence. Founded in 1994, it was a prolific developer with games displayed visual flair, mechanical inventoryness and a knowledge for synthesising pop-quality themes. Most Excitingly, You Cold Never Really predict what the studio would do next. While it primarily produced first-appearson shooters, there were forves into platforms, Dungeon Crawlers and Open-World Games. And even the core FPS Titles Differed Wildly in Theme and Style, Inspired by Everything from 60s Spy Films to Japanese Horror.
“Monolith Didn’T really have a true identity, and we honestly didn Bollywood care,” price explains. “We pretty much just made wheatver we wanted to make… Just tried to make what we thinkt was cool. “
Monolith emerged from the edutainment software company Edmark, where several of the company’s founders were previously employed. “On my interview day, i remumber this bald chap walking past me on the stairs wearing a wolfenstein 3d t-shirt. I Figured this would be a great place to work,” Says toby Gladwell, Monoliths and Monoliths Software engineer. He recalls that his co-forces were emboldened by the recent release of doom, the demonic first-manon shooter that catapulted its creators, id software, to rockstar status and trainSformed perception as a gaming platform. “We realized quctly that this was our calling. We simply had to make the best games of all time.”
However, Monolith’s Initial Project Bore Little Resamblance to Id Software’s Classic. Claw was a 2D, Mario-Style PlatFormer about a Pirate Cat. It was meant to be monolith’s debut title, but in a Quirk of Fate, The Company Acquired Another Developer in Late 1996-Q Studios-Which was Deep Into Production on a Doom-LIKE FIRSON FIRSON ShOTORSON Blood. Monolith opted to prioritise blood’s completes over claw – a decision that would have huge Ramifications.
Released in March 1997, blood puts players in the role of Caleb, A Gunslinging Servant to the Demon Tchernobog Who is Betrayed and Murdered by His Firendish Master. “That Early Games, Especially Blood and Claw, Have a very hand-crafted feel to them and wary much diy endeavors,” Price says. A 2.5D Shooter Released as Games Were Pivoting Hard Into Full 3D rendering, blood was in some ways behind the time. But its Gritti Visual Style, Creative Weapons Such as Flare Guns and Voodoo Dolls, and Innovative Addition of Alternate of Alternate Fire Modes for Weapons, Helped It Stand toe-TOE-to-to-TOE with more TOTHOLOGICALY Advance Games Such as Quake.
The success of blood sent monolith into a frenzy of fps development. Between 1998 and 2003, It Designed Seven New Games in the Genre Including Blood 2; The anime-inspired Shooter Shogo: Mobile Armour Division, Which Alternated Between on-Foot Combat and City-Flatting Battles Inseed Gundam-Style Match; And two licensed tie-in games, aliens Versus Predator 2, and Tron 2.0.
“Our Studio Culture was born from a deep-seated conviction that we could accomplish anything we put our minds to,” Gladwell Says. “We Talked Games, We Played Games TogeTher, Both Competitively and to Analyse. There wasn’st significant boundaries, give that we are all new to building Would stand along with the giants of the time. “
The Lack of Boundaries also applied to the practical side of game design. “This was still a fledgling industry when we get started. Spread of Opinion and Feedback, BeCause Everyone was contributing to design, ”Gladwell says. “Much of my own time at monolith was spent in the energy vortex between design, art, audio and engineering.”
The brightest star of monolith’s early years, the operative: no one lives Forever, or nolf as it is affectionatetely knowledge, Saw players don the orange catsuit of cate arch Pastiche of 60s espionage fiction. Its wide-ringing adventure transported players to morocco, Germany, the tropics and even into space, with etc. Level introducing new ideas, weapons and gadgets. Released in 2000, it was also one of the only shooters of its time with a female protagonist – and her portrayal holds up surprisingly well for a game that Owes a Significant Debt to Austin Powers.
Monolith’s Vintage Year, However, Came in 2005, DURING it released three games. AlongSide the Matrix Online, A Massively Multiplayer Adaptation of the 1999 sci -fi action movie, monolith related a second game partly inspired by the same film: Fear. The culmination of monolith’s mastery of the fps, fear combines the espionage themes of nolf, the stylised ultraviolence of blood and the japanese borrowings of shogo-thouked this time it looks, it is aoror film Films, Particularly Ringu, For inspiration. It bound these elements together with dynamic slow-motion combat and state-of-the-the-to-enemy ai design, pitching the player against Against an army of clones that could seek semeingly work toge Outfox the player. The result is one of the best first-phase shooters ever made.
Fear is arguably monolith’s best game. Yet Despite Its Title, it isn’t the scariest. One month after fear launched, monolith related condemned: Criminal Origins. A Dark and Gritti Detective Thriller Inspired by Films Such as Se7en and the Silence of the Lambs, Condemned LIKWISE BLENDED HORROR and Battles Against Erily Human Enemaies. But the fores you face in condemned are crazed vagrants who Attack the player with steel pipes and wooden plans, these tooth-nail duels intersfersed with grisley investigations.
By far monolith’s most unsettling game, condemned’s atmosphere of degre of degre and more convincing Than what anything A level set in a mannequin-filled department store has become infamous for its paranoia-inducing qualities. “Their Studio had a real talent for permanently altering Including dusk, partly inspired by monolith’s work. “After playing their games, you’ll never look at empty office buildings or crusty subway stations the same way against.”
Fear and condemned would be the last truly original games the Studio would make make. By 2005, Monolith Had Been Accquired by Warner Bros, and after providing fear and condemned with Decent If Lesser Sequels, Monolith Became a servant of warner bros ‘means’ means ‘means’ means.
Yet even in this role, monolith’s inventive, capricious personality shines through, as in 2012’s bizarre multiplayer shooter shooter goter Gotham City Imposters, WHERERS ASSUMED THELES ASSUMED THEALES OF ROWSAM GOTHAM GOTHAM GOTHAM GOTHAM GOTHAM GOTHAM GOTHAM Pretending to be batman and the joker. The highlight of the studio’s latter years, howyver, was middle-etheth: shadow of mordor. An Open-World Game in the Assassin’s Creed Mold, Shadow of Mordor Featured the Remarkable Nemes Ai System, which reorganized sauron’s faceless army of orcs into a scholes With recognisable personalities players would reepeated Encounter in Tit-for-Tat Blood Fuds.
Nemesis was a potentially genre-defining concept, an idea dozens of other games would borrow from and riff on. But we will never know what its influence could have been. Warner bros patened the system in 2021, and the only game to feature it since is monolith’s final release, middle-ethase, middle-etha: shadow of war. Monolith was working on a wonder woman game that would also also have featured the system, but this project was canceled along with along alongside monolith’s closure.
When a game studio closes, it can be deficult to gauge what is lost. Drive, perhaps, is what ultimately defines monolith’s legacy. Between its foundation in 1994 and shadow of war’s publication in 2017, Monolith Created 23 Games, One for Every Year of its existence up to that point. Which makes it more shocking that monolith closed with noting to show for its last eight years of existence.
That such a dependable studio failed to release another game in almost a decade should raise serial questions about modern Industry practices and how studios are increasing Investors, and Venture Capitalists. The demand that every release be bigger and better looking, appealing to the widest audience, and poised to serve players for years, is transforming the industry into a zero-saum game Allowed to Finish, let alone win or lose.
