Longbow_Games

Longbow Games

Longbow Games

Canadian video game developer


Longbow Games is a Canadian video game developer based in Toronto. It was founded in 1998 by Seumas McNally.

Quick Facts Formerly, Company type ...

History

Longbow Games was established in 1998 as Longbow Digital Arts by Seumas McNally. In 2000, the company's tank combat game Tread Marks won the top award at the Independent Games Festival. Shortly thereafter, McNally died of Hodgkin lymphoma aged 21. The Independent Games Festival renamed its grand prize in his honour. Since then, Longbow is run by McNally's family, such as father Jim, brother Phillipe, and mother Wendy. In 2012, the company had seven employees and an intern, otherwise outsourcing tasks to subcontractors.[1]

Projects

Hegemony: Philip of Macedon was a pet project of Jim McNally, who became interested in Philip while researching Alexander the Great and discovering that it was actually his father who had developed the troop types, tactics and infrastructure that enabled Alexander's invasion of the Persian Empire.[2] In hindsight, the early arcade games Longbow produced were mere stepping stones to the more in-depth real-time strategy games of the Hegemony series.[3] In 2018, Longbow released the puzzle-adventure game Golem.[4]

Finances

A bottleneck has been financing, since independence from publishing firms meant being forced to rely on self-funding. However, as Longbow developed the game engine for Hegemony from scratch, it was eligible to receive research and development credit from the government. An export fund for sending Canadian companies abroad to promote their games supported Longbow to visit trade shows.[5] With its title Hegemony Rome: The Rise of Caesar, Longbow attempted Steam Early Access to gain player feedback in 2013/14.[6] In 2014/15, Longbow launched a crowdfunding campaign via Kickstarter for its next strategy title, Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients,[7] but raised only a fraction of its CA$30,000 goal.[8]

Games


References

  1. Torontos Longbow Studios avoiding iOS in favour of hardcore PC games. On the website of Financial Post, visited 4 February 2021 (English)
  2. Great Expectations: Hegemony Interview. On the website of Rock Paper Shotgun, visited 4 February 2021 (English)
  3. Developer Interview: Jim McNally. On the website of Flash of Steel, visited 4 February 2021 (English)
  4. Tarason, Dominic (30 May 2018). "Quiet & stylish point-and-click puzzler Golem is out now". Rock Paper Shotgun. Retrieved 12 April 2021.
  5. Interview: Longbow Games Talks Indie RTS Hegemony: Philip Of Macedon. On the website of Gamasutra, visited 4 February 2021 (English)
  6. Longbow Games sets up kickstarter campaign for Hegemony 3: Clash of the Ancients. On the website of GameWatcher, visited 4 February 2021 (English)
  7. Hegemony III: Clash of the Ancients - Funding Unsuccessful. On the website of KickTraq, visited 4 February 2021 (English)

Share this article:

This article uses material from the Wikipedia article Longbow_Games, and is written by contributors. Text is available under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International License; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.