Bob Rafei and Dan Arey, founders of Big Red Button Entertainment (BRB), today announced that they have entered into a strategic partnership with Emergent Game Technologies. The partnership will position Emergent as BRB's central technology resource and enhance BRB's creative vision, exceptional team and game design prowess. Marc Jackson, founder of Seahorn Capital, orchestrated the partnership and his team will continue to play a key role in building a strong foundation for this ground-breaking collaboration.
Big Red Button and Emergent will work together to advance BRB's scalable distributed production methodology, centered around Emergent's technology. BRB will become a premier licensee of the Gamebryo LightSpeed game development system and assist Emergent by showcasing prototypes and refining cutting-edge tools and features for the upgraded platform. Emergent will in turn provide custom development services to support BRB's first projects.
"Our greatest resource is the culture of our company. In choosing to develop this strategic relationship with BRB as part of our game technology initiative, we had to ensure that the intent for both parties was to create a true partnership, as opposed to us just selling a license," said Geoffrey Selzer, CEO of Emergent. "LightSpeed is designed to enable this level of collaboration between Emergent and its customers. We think this combination of BRB, Seahorn Capital, and Emergent establishes a new model for the next generation of AAA game development."
Big Red Button Entertainment was founded by game industry veterans Bob Rafei and Dan Arey in 2008. Rafei has worked for 16 years in the games industry, serves on several industry panels and advisory boards and was employee #1 at Naughty Dog , where he was instrumental in creating celebrated original properties Crash Bandicoot, Jak & Daxter and Uncharted. Dan Arey is a 20-year veteran of such companies as Electronic Arts, Crystal Dynamics and Naughty Dog, where he was lead designer, writer and Creative Director. Arey has played a key role on over 15 released titles and is on the video game faculty at USC School of Cinema.
"This is a win-win for all partners. Through Emergent's game technology initiative, we get an unparalleled technology and support platform to build our titles, while Emergent gets our proven, veteran team to help make their robust tools even more developer-driven," said Bob Rafei, BRB's CEO and Chief Visual Officer.
"Emergent will help us hone the effectiveness of our distributed development model which will ultimately serve both the game development community and gamers as we find new ways to launch AAA quality games," added Dan Arey, BRB's Chief Creative Officer.
"BRB represents the new face of AAA. Their focus on gameplay innovation and scalable production practices when combined with our technology and support systems will change the way games are made," said Scott Johnson, Emergent's president. "From day one, BRB is empowered to rapidly prototype their ideas and shape their workflow on top of a professional software environment that is fully supported by our entire organization. Guys like Bob and Dan realize their defining contributions to the games industry are ahead of them and will be accomplished by creating incredibly entertaining games. We're here to support a new level of creativity in all facets of game development as represented by this partnership."