After a long time of relative silence, the last two weeks have been full of announcements and good news coming from W!Games. Or Vanguard Games, which is now officially our new name. Now that we can finally talk about everything that’s been going on, I thought it would be nice to give an overview of the most interesting developments and provide some background information for those who are interested in reading more.

Receiving an award for Greed Corp out of the hands of legendary Katamari Damacy designer Keita Takahashi (now officially named Katamari-san, thanks to my colleague René) was just one of the highlights. In the above picture, from left to right: fellow game designer Harry van Mierloo, creative director Marcel du Long, producer René Derks, the legendary Katamari-san, and me.

W!Games and Karami merge into Vanguard Games

W!Games changes its name once again (it used to be Woedend! Games), but with good reason. The studio is merging with Karami, a small studio founded by Martin de Ronde and Michiel Mol, of Guerrilla fame. Gamasutra picked up the press release that went out about this, but they also did an interview with Martin on the strategic and practical reasons behind this merger. It also describes a bit more what Karami was and what Vanguard is actually going to do.

Arthur Houtman as CEO of Vanguard

Arthur is such an industry heavyweight, him being Vanguard’s CEO deserved a press release on its own. In the short time he’s been with us, he has already shared some entertaining and insightful stories. I’m sure his years of experience at Disney Online and Atari will have a positive impact on the studio and its products.

EA announces Gatling Gears

The project I’ve been working on after Greed Corp, Gunstorm, got an official new name and will be published in a partnership with Electronic Arts. That new name is Gatling Gears, but I still catch myself calling it Gunstorm every now and then. You’d think we get our inspiration for game names from Epic, right? Anyway, I must say I’m very proud a big publisher like EA has so much confidence in our next game and will help to make it an even bigger success. Check out the official press release here.

Dutch Game Awards and PC release for Greed Corp

Yesterday and the day before, it was once again time for the annual Game in the City event in Amersfoort, The Netherlands. In the evening of the first day, the Control Industry Dinner also took place there, including the ceremony for the Dutch Game Awards. Greed Corp was nominated in four categories and we won two of them! By earning the Best PC/Console Game Award and Control Industry Award, Greed Corp is officially the best game released in 2010 by a Dutch developer, according to the professional jury and all Control readers that voted. The actual awards themselves, one red owl and one black, turned out to be very fragile and it seems we were not the only ones having trouble keeping them in one piece.

Winning these awards is a great addition to the other Greed Corp related news we announced last week. It’s finally coming out on PC! The boxed version will appear in Germany on December 3, with more details incoming.

Seems like Greed Corp made quite an impact. Lets hope we will be able to continue to do so with Gatling Gears and all of Vanguard’s future projects. I think we’re off to a good start.