SIX YEARS OF INFLUENCE
Project Hull Breach (R.I.P.) was a bold and early journey in crowd-sourced development. A project and website that would allow the gaming community to participate in all aspects of concept and design. It started with a team of 30 artists producing a wide variety of ideas whilst over 1000 gamer’s put down their ideas, voted and narrowed down the design concept.
At it’s heart, a Science Fiction first-person shooter with a raw feel, zero-G combat and a variety of gameplay modes. Hull Breach attracted the attention of publishing giant Valve and along with the media attention, the Hull Breach website received millions of regular visitors. Thousands of images, 3D assets, audio, music, rich storylines, and background narrative make up what has been 6 years of combined development.
Why did it fail? A lack of focus on the core requirements, feature creep, too few coders and ultimately a lack of experience. But it brought together some beautiful minds who created beautiful things, it also helped create careers for many of those involved. You might still be able to view the old forums here.
Contributers
PHB owes much to the many hundreds of creative minds that contributed to it, far too many to name here but some of the key contributors were…
James O’Hare, Lim Ri Kai, Jakob Nielsen, Michael Kingery, Kamjar Fadai, Sven Herrmann, Shawn Snelling, Winifred Phillips, Bob Rice, Marit Kristina Abrahmsen, Luke Maskell, Patrick Walker, Sean Beeson, Scott Sigler, Sam Flemming, Raphael van Lierop and hundreds more.
“Hull Breach was an extraordinary experiment in community-based development with a singular vision – to allow an extended development team the creative freedom necessary to break new ground and take the kind of risks that lead to startling innovation. I wanted to support this kind of creatively-driven enterprise, as I believe that this core philosophy will be very important to the future success of the video game industry. Anyone who takes risks and pushes creative boundaries should be supported in any way possible.”
Winifred Phillips
Assorted Media
Battle Score by Winifred Phillips
Concept Audio by Patrick Walker
A speech from the story, written by author Chris Mitchell, narrated by Anthony Blake
Various concept art
