Part 2: MythForce

When HR Director Kara Brown arrived at Beamdog four years ago, she found a company of only 17 employees. “Beamdog was a scrappy company with lofty goals.” Brown is conscious of the struggles a growing company faces. “The team had its bumps along the way, but their tenacity and passion is a testament to the culture we have at Beamdog.”

Project Director Luke Rideout joined around the same time. He was the first to propose a game embracing the aesthetics of 1980s cartoons. CEO Oster wasn’t immediately sold, but he says Rideout and Art Manager Eric Booker “presented a compelling vision of what the game could be.”

Rideout elaborates, “In order to transition from a plucky little port studio to full-on ‘Triple-I’ dev team, we had to increase the company to five times its previous size in a matter of months while learning new technology and production practices. All this while working in an unfamiliar and notoriously challenging game genre with an art style that, on its own, would have been a momentous undertaking.”

Development Director Brock Yates helped prepare Beamdog for an undertaking that had only a code name. As he remembers, “We had hardly begun building our chops with Unreal Engine, and Project Battleaxe was a motley collection of experiments, investigations, and concepts. We set out looking for people excited at the prospect of coming into the studio ready to break new ground, learn new technology, and build a new type of Beamdog game.”

Quality Assurance Manager Erin McIntyre has been an important part of the transformation of Beamdog since 2019. “I've seen the company grow from having a small group of internal QA to gathering a substantial team.” Her experience at Beamdog has been gratifying compared with those of QAs elsewhere. “It's great to see a company that really collaborates with QA rather than putting them in a windowless supply closet to fend for themselves.”

Beyond the look of the game now known as MythForce, the game’s creators wanted something more: a sense of fellowship. As Oster puts it, “We want you to feel the camaraderie of your party members, the satisfaction of combining disparate abilities to achieve something greater than you can alone. For us, MythForce is about the party and how they support each other. We wanted the game to be playable and fun single player, but we've always known everything is better with friends.”

The same could be said about the people behind the games. MythForce presented opportunities for new employees. When Associate Environment Art Lead Mica Pettibone interviewed at Beamdog, she knew only of the D&D games. “I found out they were working on a new IP during the interview process and was very excited.”

Since joining Beamdog, Pettibone has become a key contributor to MythForce. Achieving the 80s’ sensibility hasn’t always been easy, but she echoes a refrain heard from others. “Every time we come up against a challenge, there’s a feeling of banding together to get the job done.”

Soon, Beamdog will be part of an even bigger team. In April of 2022, the company announced it had entered a deal to be acquired by Aspyr Media, a subsidiary of Embracer Group.

The people behind Beamdog and Aspyr have known each other for years, Oster says. “With Aspyr’s work on the Knights of the Old Republic on Mac and iPad, we covered some of the same ground, so we'd often talk at game events. It was always like meeting up with old friends who could appreciate the challenges we both faced.”

“We started talking about an acquisition about a year ago, and it felt natural right from the start. We both value hard work and quality products while trying to balance the quality of life for our teams.”

Ted Staloch, co-founder and co-CEO of Aspyr adds, “Trent Oster and I have been colleagues and friends in the gaming industry for many years, and I am now proud to include business partners to that relationship. We have been fans of Beamdog since Day One, as the backbone of their catalog is aligned with Aspyr’s catalog. More importantly, Beamdog is a direct match around Aspyr's ambitions to grow significantly, both from a catalog perspective and by creating games that delight fans.”

With MythForce available in Early Access, Beamdog continues to expand the game with regular updates and two new chapters on the way. In keeping with the company’s desire to remove barriers between creators and players, an active community of gamers is instrumental in providing the feedback that inspires a constant stream of improvements. You can join that community here.

What’s next for Beamdog? In the coming year, the company will focus on guiding MythForce to its full release with three complete chapters of adventure. Beyond that, keep an eye on this page for feature interviews and the latest news.