True Games Interactive Inc., a startup video game company that was bought last year by Indian media and entertainment group UTV Software Communications Ltd., is readying its first multiplayer online game.
“Warrior Epic” is set to debut next month. It’s now in what’s known as a closed beta, where handpicked players test the game and give feedback.
True Games licensed “Warrior Epic” from developer Possibility Space Inc., which has offices in Austin, Texas, and Beijing.
“Warrior Epic” is a set in a fantasy world where players collect and control a variety of warriors, customize their personal warrior halls and team up with other players on missions and dungeon raids.
True Games, which got its start about a year ago in Santa Ana, has spent months tweaking the game before the launch.
“We’ve been working to improve the overall game play experience and to refine it,” said Jeff Lujan, cofounder and chairman. “When we saw the game, it had so much promise and we felt that for our audience it needed some fine tuning and technology.”
Part of its efforts included design work on the levels within the game and character development.
The key to a good gaming experience is to “captivate the emotions” of the player, Lujan said.
“For me, that’s the secret,” he said. “It’s so difficult to do,it takes an artist, an animator and a software programmer to make sure everything acts and reacts appropriately.”
The company has a business model called “free-to-play micro transactions” where games are free and players can buy virtual items to enhance the game along the way.
Items for purchase,such as weapons or access to other areas in the game,give players an edge over rivals. Others are just for fun, such as being able to customize the look of your online character.
“People can play the game without ever paying a penny,” Lujan said. “Our philosophy is that a free-to-play game has to be better and more compelling than one you would expect to pay retail for.”
True Games worked with distributors to release the game in parts of Europe and in China. Distributors publish the game in other languages, monitor transactions and do customer service.
There are other changes afoot at True Games.
The company recently moved from Santa Ana’s Digital Media Center to a small office in Irvine. It’s also hired a handful of workers for a total of 16.
Paperless Exec
Irvine’s Kofax Plc, which makes software that helps companies cut down on paper, nabbed a sales executive from Costa Mesa-based business software maker FileNet Corp.
Kofax hired Steve Johnson, 50, as senior vice president of software sales for the Americas. He’s set to oversee a direct sales force as well as indirect sales through distributors and other partners.
Johnson will report to Alan Kerr, executive vice president of field operations.
Before joining Kofax, Johnson worked at FileNet, a unit of IBM Corp. that was bought for $1.5 billion in 2006.
Big Blue dropped FileNet’s brand name last year, when it was folded into its software unit headquartered in New York.
Johnson started at FileNet in 2003 as vice president of sales for what the company called “key accounts” in North America.
His most recent FileNet post was vice president for enterprise content management sales, where he managed more than 100 workers for business units on the East Coast and in Canada.
Johnson also held sales management positions at Open Text Corp., NextPage Inc., Ascential Software Corp., Informix Software Inc. and Oracle Corp.
The hiring is part of organizational changes at Kofax during the past year or so.
Chief Executive Reynolds Bish, who was brought in from a competitor to streamline the company, has simplified the reporting structure at Kofax’s sites around the world, rebranded its portfolio of software and added several executives to its upper ranks.
Kofax makes scanning software that collects paper documents, forms, invoices, e-mail and photos and organizes them into a searchable database of electronic files.
Trials and Triumphs
Former Broadcom Corp. chief financial officer Bill Ruehle last month won a round in the early phases of his upcoming trial over backdated stock options at the Irvine chipmaker.
U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney ruled last month that talks about options between Ruehle and lawyers from Irell & Manella LLP can’t be used by federal prosecutors, according to a report in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal newspaper.
Carney said Irell didn’t get written consent to disclose what the judge considered to be confidential talks between Ruehle and Irell, which works for Broadcom.
The ruling was a setback to prosecutors, who had hoped to use the conversations to try to show Ruehle’s involvement in the backdating of options at Broadcom.
In early 2007, Broadcom restated several years of financial results to reflect $2.2 billion in charges for misdated stock options. The restatement bill was the largest of any company involved in a stock options issue.
Judge Carney sided with Ruehle’s lawyers who argued their client believed Irell was gathering information to defend him.
Cofounder and former chief executive Henry “Nick” Nicholas also faces charges in the options case.
Ruehle’s case is set to go to trial in October. He left Broadcom in 2006 after serving as financial chief for most of the company’s existence. Nicholas left in 2003.
