Deadline Games A/S

History according to Chris Mottes (CEO):

Deadline's history is not the classic story of a development company started by five computer-science students in a garage...

In contrast, Deadline was a professional, internationally recognised television production company when, in 1996, the company's Creative Director, Simon Jon Andreasen, became insistent that it was time to fulfill our (secret) dream of producing games.

Since we both were secret gamers (not very cool at the time) I agreed that we should invest in starting a games department. The rapid spread of the multimedia PC and PlayStation heralded the spreading of games beyond the realm of teenage boys and into the mass market. It also signalled that this was our last chance to enter the market at a time when the barriers of entry where reasonable. In the course of just six months, the company's new games division grew from 3 to 15 employees, and within a year it was obvious that the prevailing drive in the company was to produce games rather than television programs.

In 1997, Deadline joined forces with TATI, a Swedish company, to form a developer-owned publishing company, Vision Park Entertainment AB. The television division was sold and our focus was now set 100% on games and interactive entertainment.

At Vision Park, I (Chris Mottes) sat on the Board of Directors and worked as Vice President of Internal Development, responsible for building our development department up to include 130 people, spread out in four games development studios, one online entertainment studio, one Corporate advertainment/infotainment studio and an Interactive TV studio in locations in Oslo, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Copenhagen. I remained in this role as a member of the management team of Vision Park until March 2001, taking the company public and expanding it from thirty employees, with a turnover of £3 million, to one hundred and seventy employees, with a turnover of £20 million.

Vision Park exclusively distributed games throughout Scandinavia during this period for several major international games publishers including Codemasters, Eidos, Activision, InterPlay, Virgin, Empire, Blue Byte, Aviva and SCI.

In March 2001, Creative Director Simon Andreasen and I decided to carry out a management takeover of our old studio, Deadline Games. We did this because we wanted to move on to make AAA titles for the consoles that clearly are the future of gaming.

Today, Deadline has two major business areas: Our Games department is dedicated to games development on all platforms for the world market. Our aim is to keep creating highly original titles and to shape the future of interactive entertainment.

Our Corporate department develops hi-tech, tailor-made business-to-business solutions for interactive marketing, learning, testing and visualisation products for a range of customers. By re-using technologies and concepts from our Games department we can deliver products that have a huge added-value to our customer since they can include the highest standards of interactivity available for a fraction of the original development costs.

Deadline Games facts:

Number of productions: 8 full-price PC games & 3 Corporate PC products.

Employees: 60 hard-working men and women.

Production lines: 2.

Technology: 2D isometric MUH Works and 3D real-time KAPOW Systems 3D. Playstation 2 and Microsoft Xbox developer status.

Present and former partners: Warner Bros, EA, Ubisoft, Valusoft, Tivola, Pan Vision, Living Books, Vision Park, BMG Interactive, Bonnier Multimedia, Danish Centre for Human Rights, Nordea Bank, Jyske Bank, Advertising agency Nørgård Mikkelsen, Danmarks Kirkelige Mediecenter (publisher of material for the Danish Lutheran Church).

Owners: Chris Mottes (CEO), Simon Jon Andreasen (Creative Director), shareholders and employees.

In January 2009 the studio announced that the title Faith and a .45 had been put on hold indefinitely. It was a story about two outlaws set during the Great Depression. Because no publisher could be founded, it became too costly to finish it in time.