Grafan Announced

Straight from their newly launched website:

INDUSTRY VETERANS LAUNCH NEW GAME STUDIO, EMOGENCE, LLC

Company Plans to Break New Ground with First-Person Action Role Playing Game

REDMOND, Wash., March 15, 2004 Former Microsoft technology executives Herb Marselas and Chas. Boyd today announced the formation of Emogence, LLC, an independently funded computer and video game development studio. The company is currently developing a first-person action role playing game called Grafan, which is slated to debut on the PC in 2004.

The Emogence management team represents more than 40 years of advanced technology and game development experience. Herb Marselas, the company’s co-founder and chief executive officer, most recently held various programming and technology positions with Microsoft. He served as a development lead with the Direct3D graphics group and, prior to that, worked with two Microsoft-acquired game studios, Ensemble Studios and Bungie Studios. In those posts, he created the 3D engine for the Age of Mythology and worked on Halo 2.

Before that, Mr. Marselas was with Intel’s Platform Architecture Lab where he was responsible for improving the state of game 3D graphics usage and performance on the Intel/Windows desktop. In this capacity, he worked alongside dozens of developers including Activision, Microsoft and Electronic Arts, to architect and improve graphics performance on many blockbuster games. Mr. Marselas began his game development career in the mid-1990s with Microprose/Spectrum Holobyte as one of the first 3D hardware developers. Earlier in his career, Mr. Marselas held a variety of technology posts with private industry corporations developing large-scale custom business applications.

(We are extremely excited about starting a new company and having the opportunity to execute on a dream that Chas. and I both share to create a game that delivers great gameplay and graphically surpasses any interactive entertainment experience to date,) said Herb Marselas. (We’ve built a groundbreaking engine that generates environments on-the-fly and showcases high resolution texturing coupled with advanced techniques including Pixel Shader 3.0 rendering and high dynamic range lighting that we believe will raise the industry bar, particularly within the action role playing game genre.)

Chas. Boyd, co-founder and the chief architect, brings extensive graphics engineering and architecture experience to Emogence. For the past decade, Mr. Boyd served as the visionary and chief architect for Microsoft’s Direct3D graphics API. In this capacity, Mr. Boyd worked with all 3D graphics hardware companies and hundreds of game developers to drive the advancement in 3D graphics on the PC. He has been credited with innovating programmable shading and multi-texture models implemented today by all graphics hardware.

Prior to his entrance into the game industry, Mr. Boyd lead the development for a number of products including the first 3D viewer for seismic data analysis. Before that Mr. Boyd worked in the aeronautics industry and was responsible for developing virtual reality systems, satellite modeling and display technology.

Graphics industry leaders are also looking forward to the company’s entrance into the gaming market. (This game takes the next big leap on delivering an ultra-realistic, immersive gameplay experience,) said Bill Rehbock, director of development relations at NVIDIA. (Because it takes advantage of the latest generation of graphics hardware features such as Pixel Shader 3.0, Grafan is likely to become a key industry performance benchmark. The visual quality of this game is bound to blow people away.)