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 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Video games |
| Founded | 2001; 24 years ago (2001) |
| Headquarters | , |
| Products | Dead Cells,Die2Nite |
Number of employees | 8[1] |
| Website | motiontwin |
Motion Twin is an independent video game development studio, that initially specialized in onlinevideo games and has most recently worked onroguelite games. Founded in 2001, the company is aworker cooperative enterprise based inBordeaux, France.
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Motion Twin was founded in 2001 as aprivate limited company in France.[2] In 2004, they became aworker cooperative with equal salary and decision-making power between its members.[3][4] The name Motion Twin refers to an animation technique, calledmotion tween, and the red star in the logo was chosen due to its revolutionary connotations.[5]
In the studio's early years, it made web-based games for its social gaming platform Twinoid. Motion Twin initially gained notice through the release of games such as Hammerfest,My Brute,Mush,Die2Nite, andAlphaBounce. By 2009, Motion Twin had 10 million registered users and 15 games.[6]
As the market for web games dried up, it attempted to move into mobile games, with little success. By this point, Motion Twin had briefly considered disbanding.[7]
Left with one "last chance" for the studio, Motion Twin developedDead Cells.[7] It was made as the developers' "passion project" and "something hardcore, ultra-niche, with pixel art and ridiculous difficulty" that they thought would be a potential risk for gaining player interest.[8] Motion Twin initially attempted to make a follow-up to tower defense game Die2Nite, but most of the game mechanics were ultimately stripped out to focus on action-based combat.[9]
Dead Cells was released to Steam Early Access in May 2017[8] and macOS and Linux on June 26, 2018.[10] It was released on Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch August 7.[11] An iOS version was released on August 28, 2019, and an Android version was released on June 3, 2020.[12][13]
About a year from its early access release,Dead Cells sold over 730,000 units,[14] and exceeded 850,000 units just prior to its full release.[citation needed] By May 2019, within ten months of its full release,Dead Cells had accumulated sales of two million units.[15] In March 2021,Dead Cells had sold 5 million copies.[16] It reached 10 million copies sold in 2023.[17]
In 2019, Motion Twin created a new development team calledEvil Empire that would take over development and support ofDead Cells, allowing other Motion Twin developers to start on their next project.[18][19] Evil Empire is run by Steve Filby, Motion Twin's former head of marketing, and is not a cooperative, since the company wanted to scale beyond ten employees. Motion Twin continues to maintain creative control over Evil Empire's work onDead Cells.[20][21] In 2020, lead designer Sébastien Benard left Motion Twin to found his own solo studio.[22]
The game's first paid expansion,Dead Cells: The Bad Seed, was released on February 11, 2020.[23] A second paid DLC expansion,Dead Cells: Fatal Falls, was released on January 26, 2021.[24] The game's third paid expansion titledDead Cells: The Queen and the Sea was released on January 7, 2022.[25] A fourth paid expansion,Dead Cells: Return to Castlevania, was released on March 6, 2023.[26] There have also been over 30 free updates since the game's initial release.[27]
On December 7, 2023, Motion Twin announced its next game,Windblown, debuting a trailer atThe Game Awards 2023. The game is characterized as a fast-paced isometric action game.[28]
On February 9, 2024, Motion Twin announced it would stop creating new content forDead Cells, and Evil Empire would be moving on to new projects.[29] In April 2024, it was revealed that Evil Empire's next game isThe Rogue Prince of Persia. It released into Early Access in May.[30]
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Following the success ofDead Cells, Motion Twin abandoned its web-based offerings.[31] With the end ofAdobe Flash Player support on January 1, 2021, those games would be rendered unplayable. In order to keep the games online, a group of hobbyist set up Eternal-Twin (with Motion Twin's consent), which aims to re-create as many games as possible without using Adobe Flash Player. Thus, those who still want to play after Flash Player's end of life will be able to do so.[32] Motion Twin has also made the source code for many of its game available to the public under a creative commons license.[33]
Nicolas Cannasse, a former developer at Motion Twin, has been responsible for the creation offreeware andopen source compilers and multimedia technologies, many of which build on theAdobe Flash platform.
His published products include:[citation needed]
The company, although known to the public for its browser games in flash, is at the origin of various tools and programming languages which it uses for its own developments, and which it makes available under a free license.[34] Under the impetus of one of its co-founders, Nicolas Canasse, the Bordeaux company is, for example, at the origin of the MTASC compiler, or Motion Twin ActionScript 2 Compiler, the first free ActionScript 2.0 compilers.[35]
Haxe, a technology considered to be the successor to the MTASC compiler, also invented and developed by Motion Twin, is a cross-platform language that makes it possible, from a single standardized language, to compile the same source file by targeting different platforms such as JavaScript, Flash, NekoVM, PHP or C++. This language was the subject of a book, Professional Haxe and Neko, by Franco Ponticelli and L. McColl-Sylveste, released in 2008 by John Wiley & Sons.[36]
Motion Twin has also developed its own virtual machine, called Neko. Neko is both a high-level, dynamically typed programming language whose source files, once compiled, can be run on the NekoVM virtual machine. The company is also the initiator of various libraries for the OCaml and PHP programming languages, such as the SPOD library, which allows persistence within a PHP environment.[37]
