Background
Digital Extremes Ltd. was founded by James Schmalz in 1993 and is based half way between Detroit and Toronto in London, Ontario Canada. London is a city of around 352,000 people and is home to Fanshawe Community College and the University of Western Ontario.
Game Development History
Digital Extremes had their first big hit in the shareware era of the early nineties with Epic Pinball and it’s accompanying sequels Silverball and Extreme Pinball.
On the heels of their virtual pinball success, Digital Extremes partnered with Epic Games to co-create the revolutionary 3D shooter Unreal and its descendants such as Unreal Tournament.
Digital Extremes’ most recent completely in house-developed project was 2008’s Dark Sector. Since then, Digital Extremes has worked with 2K games on the Playstation 3 port of Bioshock and the multiplayer component of Bioshock 2.
Digital Extremes also handled the PC port of Homefront and most recently, developed the Crimson Map Pack for Halo 4.
For development of Dark Sector the company developed their first in-house game engine, the Evolution Engine. The engine was also used in the development of The Darkness II, the sequel to the Starbreeze hit based on the comic book series of the same name.
Digital Extremes has recently completed development on Star Trek - a co-op game based on the franchise reboot. It will be published by Paramount and Namco-Bandai, and released in April 2013.
The company recently announced their entry into the Free-to-Play market with the development of Warframe, a co-op based third-person action game set in a persistent sci-fi universe.
Local Industry Involvement
Digital Extremes has been recognized for their business achievements on both a regional and national level. Digital Extremes was recognized as one of Canada’s top 100 employers and the Financial Post’s top 10 companies to work for. Digital Extremes has also been recognized by the London Economic Development Council for their contributions to the local economy.
Digital Extremes is also a major supporter of the Digital Interactive Gaming Conference (DIG) London. The conference focuses on promoting the game development industry in Ontario and developing contacts with local development talent.
Games
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