Atari co-founder Nolan Bushnell has signed a three-game deal with Dutch developer Spil Games to make his “mobile-first” game debut, the studio announced Wednesday.
Bushnell, who had a hand in publishing many of gaming’s early classics, including Pong, Breakout, and Adventure, will hand over his ideas to Spil, who will bring the games to life, serving as both developer and publisher. Spil will definitely make at least three games with Bushnell, which the studio said will focus on “innovation,” but the deal keeps the door open for a longer partnership. According to Venturebeat, there may be extensions for as many as eight titles.
Bushnell said he chose to work with Spil, a large, but relatively unknown company in mobile game development, because they had the “right and unique combination of technical prowess, creative skill sets, and distribution know-how.”
“The future of gaming has a very strong mobile component,” Bushnell said in a prepared statement. “It’s where most people play games and it’s where the technology and ideas are developing most quickly.”
The Hilversum, Netherlands-based company has made a big push towards pulling together top talent for mobile game development. According to a report from GamesIndustry International, the studio has filled senior positions in publishing and mobile monetization with former staffers from Ubisoft and mobile publisher Bigpoint in the last year. Spil CEO Tung Nguyen-Khac called the opportunity to work with Bushnell “a huge validation” of his company’s work.
“The timing of our partnership is perfect,” Tung said. “Spil Games has entered a period of astonishing creativity and innovation when it comes to mobile gaming and working with Nolan, we believe will help us amplify that success.”
Bushnell’s first game published by Spil is expected to launch in early 2017.
The Call of Duty franchise has held a special place in my heart ever since I played my first Black Ops game back in 2010. That game's campaign was something else, with twists and turns that culminated in a mind-blowing finale. We can all admit that compared to those older campaigns, the recent CODs have been lackluster at best, and a complete and utter disappointment at worst. The reboot of Modern Warfare did give me some hope, as the first two installments were actually quite good, but the third game left such a bad taste in my mouth that I wasn’t exactly expecting much from Modern Warfare 4.
After recently finishing the campaign, I can say that this installment is nothing like the recent releases and instead feels closer to the franchise’s roots. For the first time in a long while, the campaign comes across as well-crafted rather than rushed to hit a release date. It arrives three years after MW3, and you can see exactly where all that time went. It seems the studio finally made listening to player feedback a priority.
Epic Games has just announced the 2026 Epic AI MegaJam, which is looking to see how much game development can be squeezed into a very short window. This is running from November 12 through November 15.
Participants can work alone or in teams of up to five people, build in Unreal Engine or Unreal Editor for Fortnite, and bring along “as many AI agents as you want.” Epic explicitly encourages coding agents, AI-generated assets, audio tools, writing tools, and other AI systems. The official event page literally says "Vibe your way to $50k.”
It’s turning into a pretty good time to be a Monster Hunter fan who plays on a phone. Capcom has confirmed that Monster Hunter Outlanders will launch on Android and iOS on October 29, giving the series a new mobile-first game just as Monster Hunter Rise is also preparing to make the jump to smartphones through Netflix.
Outlanders is being developed by Tencent subsidiary TiMi Studio Group under license and supervision from Capcom. Unlike Rise, which appears to be the full console and PC game adapted for mobile, Outlanders is a free-to-play survival hunting game made specifically for phones.