Housemarque

Housemarque Oy is a Finnish video game developer based in Helsinki. The company was founded by Ilari Kuittinen and Harri Tikkanen in July 1995, through the merger of their previous video game companies, Bloodhouse and Terramarque, both of which were founded in 1993 as Finland's first commercial developers. Housemarque is the oldest active developer in Finland and has about 80 employees as of January 2020.

Housemarque Oy
Private
IndustryVideo games
Predecessors
  • Bloodhouse
  • Terramarque
Founded19 July 1995 (1995-07-19)
Founders
  • Ilari Kuittinen
  • Harri Tikkanen
Headquarters
Helsinki
,
Finland
Key people
Number of employees
~80 (2020)
Websitehousemarque.com

History

Bloodhouse and Terramarque (1993–1995)

Bloodhouse and Terramarque were founded in 1993, becoming Finland's first commercial video game developers.[1] Bloodhouse was led by Harri Tikkanen, and released their first game, Stardust in 1993, with a version updated for the Amiga 1200, titled Super Stardust, released the following year.[1] Terramarque was founded by Ilari Kuittinen and Stavros Fasoulas, and hired Miha Rinne in 1994.[1] Fasoulas, at the time, was working on a clone of Bubble Bobble titled Galactic, but failed to find a publisher, wherefore the game ended up on a covermount in British magazine The One.[1] The first game from Terramarque was Elfmania, released in 1994 to mixed reception.[1] The company started work on a second game, P.I.D. (short for Private Investigator Dollarally), to be published by Renegade Software.[1] When the Amiga was discontinued mid-development, production on P.I.D. was halted; when Terramarque members discussed whether the game should be ported to PlayStation, Fasoulas decided not to and quit game programming.[1] A demo of the game has been released, but the game itself was not finished.[1]

Housemarque (1995–present)

In December 1994, Kuittinen began working closely with Tikkanen, and their two companies formally merged in 1995 to form Housemarque.[1] Housemarque Oy, the legal entity, was registered on 19 July 1995.[2] Housemarque is the oldest active video game developer in Finland.[1] Both Bloodhouse and Terramarque were developing games for personal computers (PCs) at the time, with the joint team deciding to focus specficially on the evolving PC gaming market.[1] The company started out by freelancing, and after setting up their first office in the Punavuori area of Helsinki, started hiring employees and ceased freelance work.[1]

The first PC games developed by Housemarque were the MS-DOS conversion of Bloodhouse's space shooter Super Stardust (1996), adventure game Alien Incident (1996), and shooter game The Reap (1997), all of which gained favourable reception but failed to succeed commercially.[3][4][5]

In February 2014, Housemarque had over 50 employees.[6] In November 2017, the company announced that it would be stepping away from the arcade genre, which it had incorporated in all of its games since Super Stardust, as it was not generating enough revenue to justify developing further games in the genre.[7] The following April, it announced Stormdivers, a battle royale game, anticipating a 2019 release.[8][9] In December 2018, Housemarque's staff count was approaching 70 people.[10] Housemarque eventually put all of its in-development projects, including Stormdivers, on halt in January 2020. Instead, it shifted its focus on a project the company considered to be its most ambitious thus far and had been in pre-production for three years. At the time, Housemarque had close to 80 staff members.[11]

The next game in development, Returnal, was revealed at the 2020 PS5 Future of Gaming event on June 11, 2020.[12] The title will be developed for Playstation 5.[13]

Games developed

Bloodhouse
Year Title Platform(s) Publisher(s)
1993 Stardust Amiga, Atari ST, MS-DOS Bloodhouse
1994 Super Stardust Amiga, Amiga CD32 Team17

Terramarque
Year Title Platform(s) Publisher(s)
1994 Elfmania Amiga Renegade Software
Cancelled P.I.D. Amiga Renegade Software

Housemarque
Year Title Platform(s) Publisher(s)
1996 Super Stardust (port) MS-DOS GameTek
Alien Incident MS-DOS GameTek
1997 The Reap Microsoft Windows Take-Two Interactive
1999 Supreme Snowboarding Microsoft Windows Infogrames
2002 Transworld Snowboarding Xbox Infogrames
2007 Super Stardust HD PlayStation 3 Sony Computer Entertainment
2008 Golf: Tee It Up! Xbox 360 Activision
Super Stardust Portable PlayStation Portable Sony Computer Entertainment
2010 Dead Nation PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita Sony Computer Entertainment
2011 Outland Linux, macOS, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Ubisoft
2012 Furmins iOS Housemarque
Super Stardust Delta PlayStation Vita Sony Computer Entertainment
Angry Birds Trilogy (port) PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 Activision
2013 Resogun PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita Sony Computer Entertainment
2016 Alienation PlayStation 4 Sony Computer Entertainment
Super Stardust Ultra VR PlayStation 4 Sony Computer Entertainment
2017 Nex Machina Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 Housemarque
Matterfall PlayStation 4 Sony Interactive Entertainment
2021 Returnal PlayStation 5 Sony Interactive Entertainment

Unreleased games
  • Stormdivers
gollark: It won't spin up and down as easily, though.
gollark: Ought to work.
gollark: I will probably join *eventually*, this seems cool.
gollark: I'm messing around a bit on a multiplayer game.
gollark: Anyway, I probably would join, but factorio.

References
  1. Kuorikoski, Juho (5 June 2015). Finnish Video Games: A History and Catalog. McFarland & Company. pp. 43–44.
  2. "Investors". Housemarque. Archived from the original on 26 August 2018. Retrieved 26 August 2018.
  3. JTurunen (1 April 1996). "Super Stardust – Kahdesta en luovu..." Pelit.
  4. Paananen, Tytti (1 August 1996). "Muukalaisten yö – Suomalaisia muukalaisia". Pelit.
  5. Veijalainen, Kimmo (1 October 1997). "Reap – Tuhosinfoniaa". Pelit. Archived from the original on 25 August 2018. Retrieved 25 August 2018.
  6. Nichols, Derek (18 February 2014). "Know your developer: Resogun creator Housemarque". VentureBeat. Archived from the original on 21 August 2018. Retrieved 21 August 2018.
  7. O'Connor, Alice (1 November 2017). "Housemarque declare "arcade is dead," ditch the genre". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Archived from the original on 21 August 2018. Retrieved 21 August 2018.
  8. O'Connor, Alice (23 April 2018). "Housemarque hint at battle royale flirtation with Stormdivers". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Archived from the original on 21 August 2018. Retrieved 21 August 2018.
  9. O'Connor, Alice (21 August 2018). "Housemarque's Stormdivers is a flashy battle royale". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Archived from the original on 21 August 2018. Retrieved 21 August 2018.
  10. Kuittinen, Ilari (20 December 2018). "Jumping on the bandwagon: From 'Arcade is Dead' to AAA". Housemarque. Archived from the original on 9 May 2019. Retrieved 6 June 2019.
  11. Valentine, Rebekah (23 January 2020). "Housemarque puts all other projects on hold to focus on "most ambitious game to date"". GamesIndustry.biz.
  12. Gilliam, Ryan (11 June 2020). "Resogun creators announce PlayStation 5 game, Returnal". Polygon. Retrieved 15 June 2020.
  13. Fingas, Jon (11 June 2020). "'Returnal' for PS5 is Housemarque's most ambitious game yet". Engadget.
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