Take a cross-sectional slice through the demographic that is Lionhead Studios and in amongst the RPG, RTS and FPS fans you will find a group of individuals who are quite partial to a good old racer.

Unlike the aforementioned RPG, RTS and FPS fans, who’s pursuits are almost entirely of the virtual kind, what the racer fans love more than anything is to get behind the wheel and indulge in some white knuckle racing. So on Saturday, that’s exactly what they did!

With the support and backing of Lionhead’s social committee the motorsport enthusiasts amongst us were able to tempt out of the woodwork not just the racing fans, but a fair few drivers with little or no competitive racing experience.

On Saturday afternoon 5 teams of drivers from Lionhead descended on Buckmore Park Karting circuit, looking to make their mark on motorsport! In the picturesque Kentish woodland, Buckmore Park’s 1200m National Circuit is one of the country’s most notorious karting tracks and lays claim to being the former training ground for F1 Champions Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button.

The 3 hour long team endurance event, which acted as a qualifier for the Sodi World Series (an International Hire Kart Championship), had attracted a number of experienced teams as well as complete novices. Amongst the experienced teams were recent Sodi World Series finalists and a team currently ranked 1st in the UK (12th in the world). To add to this, the race director did his best to jovially unnerve the newbies during the drivers briefing before a total of 26 teams took to the track to do battle for grid positions in a 30 minute qualifier.

Lionhead’s teams, which varied in size between 3 and 4 drivers each, secured positions 12, 16, 17, 22 and 25 before lining up on the grid for the start of the race.
With an F1 style start the race began! For the next 3 hours the teams had to manage driver changes and a fuel stop, not to mention their nerve as they threw the kart into corners at speeds approaching 70mph.

With a personal ambition to make it into the top ten the team, “The Holy Trinity”, reached 8th place during the early stages. As the race played out we dropped position to some teams on strategies with fewer driver changes. Then, a late drive through penalty awarded for a string of minor contact offences saw us finish in the race in 12th, (where we had started).

Further down the field some of the closest racing amongst the Lionhead teams occurred between “The Carter Karters” and “Furorri” who finished in 16th and 17th respectively and were separated by a margin of less than a few hundred metres.

Coming home in 22nd and 24th amongst the other 4 man teams, and perhaps with the biggest smiles of all the Lionhead drivers, were “Wacky Racers” and “Le Quattro Formaggi”.

Needless to say much fun was had by all. Bang for buck it’s hands down one of the most exciting adrenaline sports to take part in and not a single one of our drivers left the track without a grin that went from ear to ear.

You can find our laptimes here.

Lionhead Racers: Ted Timmins, Andrew Bushell, Luke Thatcher, Jan, Jorge Da Cruz Ramalhao, Tamás Rábel, David Berenguer, James Vale, James Bailey, Craig Oman

With our teams formed and names established we trooped with our heads held high and dignity still intact in expectation of being crowned the smartest of the smart.

After a quick buffet and the odd tipple, we took our seats and braced ourselves for our first round of questions. Our first challenge to master was a complex picture round with famous faces from across the ages. To the advantage of the *cough* slightly older generation amongst the group, the round was a breeze, but for the majority we were quite frankly a bit out of touch with our 1930’s writers and 50’s cooks.

With the intro complete, our quizmaster Mike West took to the stage – “Pens at the ready!”

Round after round we tackled increasingly difficult questions, brewing tension and anxiety as no team wanted to be titled the night’s losers. With the clear winners in sight each team had to seriously up their game, resulting in some ‘light’ cheating and poorly executed bluffing techniques. (Not something we encourage)

After a hard fought contest, a steward’s enquiry for cheating and also our quizmaster getting a question wrong (whoops!) the winners by just half a point were announced.

Congratulations David Eckelberry (the cheat suspect) , David Bridle, Ben Huskins, Ben Brooks and James Blackham.

Ben Brooks, David Eckelberry, Ben Huskins, David Bridle and James Blackham

We’d also like to give a special mention to losing team who didn’t quit even after only scoring 2 points after 20 questions. They were rewarded with a set of pub quiz books to revise for next time!

Think you could trounce the winning team? Here are some of the questions for you to try your hand at answering. We’ll post the answers in a later blog post!

Only Connect Round
What word links the following?

1. Andretti, Super, Lanza
2. Cake, Brighton, Northern
3. Martin, Gordon, Cathy
4. Grape, gold, magic
5. Damage, Bike, Rangle
6. Tank, Kick, Wins!
7. Strife, Dark, Computing
8. High, Dance, Hawk
9. Solid, Eyes, Rubik’s
10. South, Mind, Creatures

What comes next in the sequence?

1. Red, Orange, Yellow
2. Alpha, Beta, Gamma
3. Philosopher’s Stone, Chamber of Secrets, Prisoner of Azkaban
4. Alonso, Raikkonen, Hamilton
5. Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium
6. Dr No, From Russia with Love, Goldfinger
7. 22, 26, 34, 41, 46
8. Vulture, Condor, Pelican
9. Edward, Edward, Edward
10. Vincente Yanez Pinzon, Alonso de Ojeda, John Cabot

ANSWERS

Only Connect Round Answers
1. Mario
2. Rock
3. Freeman
4. Black
5. Quad
6. Scorpion
7. Cloud
8. Street
9. Snake
10. Beautiful

What comes next in the sequence?

1. Green
2. Delta
3. Goblet of Fire
4. Button
5. Beryllium
6. Thunderball
7. 56
8. Albatross
9. Richard
10. Christopher Columbus

As we piled onto the coach, the discussions immediately began about what choice of popcorn to buy and what the best seats would be to sit in, but the conversation never steered too far away from the idea of being out of the office in a school trip type affair. It’s been many years for some Lionhead staff since they’ve been on a coach in bulk, so to be taken out in such an event only added to our exciting venture. Inevitably a debate soon ensued surrounding Star Wars vs. Star Trek and who would win out of a fight between Spock and Han Solo; a dispute that still remains unsolved.

As we arrived, we grinned with excitement in anticipation of what could be one of the best movies of the year and of course, promptly sussed out the confectionery kiosk for some sweet treats. Sci-fi so good!

In true Trekkie style, some of the team managed to secure themselves some Star Trek badges only to the envy of those who weren’t so lucky, but no matter – we plunged into darkness and waited for the film to begin… (After about half an hour of trailers of course!)

After an immersive two hour screening with lots of stars (get it?) blasting their way through space, we were not disappointed with the Starship Enterprise’s latest mission. The film was riddled with Bond-style, villainous schemes deployed by Cumberbatch and of course the fantastic mise en scène transported you right into the action. Much like Fable, the story played on numerous morality-based themes, but no doubt provided a good balance of reckless explosions and gripping tension.

I’m sure the Lionhead team would all agree it was a spocktacular trip and the film was out of this world.

The nominees have been announced and we’re absolutely thrilled to hear that Lionhead Studios have been nominated for the Audio Accomplishment award for Fable: The Journey.

In order to achieve the most engaging and dramatic sound, Lionhead collaborated a truly world class group of audio professionals comprising of a 35+ team from both sides of the Atlantic. Teaming up once again with Microsoft Studios Central Media Audio Team in the US, Soundelux DMG and US Foley Team including Hollywood’s Foley artist of choice: Gary Hecker. For the 1st time we also forged a new partnership with British Film Sound talent at Pinewood Studios and the Foley artist Pete Burgis whose body of Foley work has cinematic greats such as The Harry Potter Films, Clash of the Titans to name a few. Foley for the cutscenes took 1.5 weeks to complete, with even more days for all the custom sound assets created on the Foley stage.

Craig, Steve, Erik and Russ

Each year Develop host one the biggest award nights celebrating game development excellence from companies around the world. Categories vary from best visual arts to best business development, giving all industry experts a chance to show off their flair be recognised for their gaming expertise. You can find the full list of Develop Awards categories and finalists here.

On July 10th we’ll be in the running against some of the finest European game development talent for our chance to snap up the prize for best Audio Accomplishment. The shortlist contains the likes of SCE’s London Studio and Far Cry creators Crytek for their audio projects created for Wonderbook: Book of Spells and Crysis 3.

The awards will be taking place at Brighton’s Hilton Metropole Hotel alongside the Develop Conference on July 30th and will see almost 100 different studios attend the event. Judging will be completed by a panel of 100 international industry experts all of which will decide the fate of eager developers wanting to grasp their reward for hard work and innovation.

We wish our Audio team the best of luck and hope to bring home another trophy for the cabinet.

Go team!

To read more about the music and audio production, check out this article on: Audio Media

On May 2nd 2012, we released our beloved little videogame, Fable Heroes, as part of the “Arcade Next” promotion for XBLA - (can you believe we were alongside Trials Evolution and Minecraft?!)

Made by a small team in just a few months, Fable Heroes came out of out Lionhead’s very first Creative Day in 2011. Our Creative Day’s give the entire studio the opportunity to stop work on our other games and head off to our local cinema to watch the wonders that everyone has created. Our 2012 Creative Day had some really exciting projects too; so perhaps we’ll be seeing more on those in the future

Fable Heroes is our little game with the big heart and a game that we had a lot of fun making, so why shouldn’t the fun continue!

Keep an eye on our Twitter today for give-away codes with #HeroesBirthday. Some of our friends at Play XBLA and The Dead Hamster will be joining in the fun too – so make sure you give them a follow. There will also be a few of the team here at Lionhead online tonight having a play, and don’t forget that playing with a dev earns you a Lionhead Studios gamerpic.

Don’t forget to send us your Fable fan art to Lionhead Fan Mail. We love to see them, so keep them coming!

Here are a couple of our favourites:

Lozzlogan

Balverine

Play XBLA

For a bit of fun and to help celebrate the occasion, here’s some Fable Heroes trivia for you…

- The in-game “Credits” level was made in a last-minute 48 hour all-nighter to get it into the game – we hope you liked it!

- If you look carefully on the World Map, you might notice the name of our Lead Artist carefully constructed out of letters…

- Did you play Fable Heroes on Halloween or Christmas last year? Don’t worry if you missed out, there’s always this year!

- Each member of the Fable Heroes dev team had a whistle, so whenever someone had something cool to show off – the whistle was blown and everyone would gather round their desk!

- Whenever a character is levelled up to maximum, they turn into a trophy on the world map – let us know in the comments if you collected them all!

- The Lionhead Logo intro for Fable Heroes was created by one of our Animators, also for Creative Day 2011!

- We spared no expense on the voice-acting in the game, who would have guessed the dev team would have such amazing vocal talent!

- A lot of the sound fx in the game were made using our own childhood toys as props!

- The inspiration to play as Hero Dolls came from the hero dolls found in Fable 1, Fable 2 and Fable 3!

FIFA Team - Semi Finals

FPS Team practicing in the Halo tournament

After much success the year before, Supermassive decided to host the event again this year and put the local studios to the test for an evening of serious gaming and of course, a little bit of fun. We couldn’t turn down the opportunity of potentially taking home a prize and doing our bit for charity, so it was the perfect occasion for us to take on the likes of EA.

The event itself is in support of a new UK video games industry based charity, Games Aid. Games Aid distribute funds to a wide range of charities and was created so that the gaming industry can give something back. The charity events are a great way to not only bring studios together, but contribute towards making a difference by doing what we do best.

So with that in mind, the evening wasn’t an attempt to destroy and conquer, but we did want to make sure we did our best to compete for some great prizes.

In the arena we put forward two teams to represent Lionhead in the FPS Tournaments. We are proud to announce that after winning all of our 6 Halo matches we were 15 seconds away from winning the Halo Final (against a Halo pro-gamer too!) We beat Supermassive and Testology in our group stages, then went on to lose to the European Gaming League in the final. Who’d have thought we nearly won against the pros though! It’s the taking part that counts

The moment that Testology lost in the FIFA final from a 120th minute penalty in extra time

On the pitch we got to the semi-final, which actually wasn’t too bad considering one of our members had only played a couple of times before. However, the biggest win of the whole night, was a 7-0 destruction of one of Creative Assembly’s teams. We salute you!

Lionhead FPS Team celebrating getting into the Halo final

Photography by Amrit Bajwa and Cédric Hauteville

Key skills required:

John Needham

Microsoft Studios EMEA is pleased to announce the appointment of John Needham to the role of Studio Head of Lionhead, effective immediately.

Reporting into Phil Harrison, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business (EMEA), John will be responsible for the day-to-day management of Lionhead Studios.

John has been a prominent figure in the video game industry since 2001. As the former CEO of both Cryptic Studios and, most recently, Gazillion Entertainment, John brings over twelve years of leadership, business development and financial experience in the entertainment and online gaming industries, to the role. John’s deep understanding of all aspects of the gaming industry, from subscription-based, massively multi-player to client-based console and free-to-play online, PC and mobile experiences, will be a huge benefit to Lionhead and to our European Studio operations more widely. In addition to his roles at Cryptic Studios and Gazillion Entertainment, John has served as: Senior Vice President of Business Development and Operations and CFO at Sony Online Entertainment (SOE), where he managed business development, strategic initiatives, international operations, customer service and quality assurance; a board member of Quark Games (publisher of over fifty Top 25 apps, with in excess of 40 million installs); and is a former member of the Gamestop Digital Advisory Council (US).
“This is a historic time in our industry and I’m excited, and honoured, to be joining Lionhead and Microsoft Studios,’ John says of his appointment. “Our vision is focused on building innovative gaming services and AAA experiences at Lionhead, and the rest of Microsoft Studios, which take advantage of Microsoft’s incredible hardware and software platforms. Personally, I can’t wait to get started.”

In welcoming John to his leadership team, Phil Harrison adds: “It’s my pleasure to welcome John Needham to Microsoft Studios and Lionhead. He brings a wealth of proven executive leadership experience in the online gaming space to the company and I know will confidently lead Lionhead towards an ambitious online future.”