Stormfront was founded in 1988 by Don Daglow, who had worked as a game programmer and then as Director of Game Development at MattelIntellivision, as a producer at Electronic Arts, and as a production executive at Broderbund. Stormfront's management includes veterans of Disney, Electronic Arts, Ensemble Studios, LucasArts, Origin Systems, THX, Vivendi Universal and Warner Bros.. Stormfront was founded as Beyond Software, but changed its name in 1993 when the trademark for Beyond proved difficult to enforce.
Highlights 1988–1993
Neverwinter Nights. Daglow had worked on game projects with Kathi McHugh and Steve Case of AOL since early in AOL's history. Apart from baseball, Stormfront's initial projects were a series of online titles for AOL, including the first original play-by-email game, Quantum Space and later the first graphical MMORPG, the original Neverwinter Nights. Neverwinter Nights held the all-time record as the top revenue-producing online RPG for almost ten years until the success of Ultima Online in the late 1990s. BioWare subsequently purchased the rights to the name, and built a new generation of award-winning multiplayer RPGs set in the Neverwinter universe.
Tony La Russa Baseball. Upon its founding in 1988 Stormfront's first project was a baseball title, which over the following eight years was to become the Tony La RussaBaseball series of games, working closely with baseball manager Tony La Russa. La Russa remains a member of the company's Board of Directors today. Daglow had previously designed or co-designed a number of baseball games, including Baseball, Intellivision World Series Baseball and Earl Weaver Baseball, the latter two with programmer Eddie Dombrower.
Gold Box D&D Games. In 1990 the company began working with SSI on a series of Gold BoxDungeons and Dragons RPG games. This led to the company's first #1 hit, Gateway to the Savage Frontier, and the first game where an AI character might fall in love with the player, Treasures of the Savage Frontier.
Stronghold. The first RTS game to use a 3D perspective, Stronghold also featured a GUI interface in an era when most games continued to use text menus.
Highlights 1993–1999
NASCAR Racing, the original versions of the top-selling American auto racing game series of all time, created by Stormfront for EA Sports. John Madden Football game designer Scott Orr, who produced a long series of games with Stormfront, championed the development of Andretti Racing, which led in turn to the creation of NASCAR.
Madden NFL. Stormfront created the original PC versions of Madden for EA Sports.
Byzantine: The Betrayal, Although the game earned limited distribution in the United States, Stormfront's 1997 Discovery Channel game Byzantine: The Betrayal swept the European EMMA Awards at the Frankfurt Book Fair, winning honors as Best Adventure Game, Game of the Year, and CD of the Year.
Tony La Russa Baseball 3 and Old Time Baseball. In 1994-1995 the company self-published these two baseball games, both distributed by EA. The baseball strike of 1994 severely hampered sales, and Stormfront returned to being solely a developer.
Blood Wake for Xbox. A featured title in Microsoft’s launch of the Xbox, Blood Wake is a fast-action naval combat game with real wakes and waves and the most striking water effects created on a video game console. The game later became part of the Xbox Platinum line of classic hits.
'. Published by Atari for PS2, Xbox and PC. Players can switch which of the three main characters they control “on the fly” at any moment to battle an onslaught of enemies. The game was nominated for multiple Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences Interactive Achievement Awards and BAFTA Awards.
Highlights 2006–2008
The Spiderwick Chronicles Wii, Xbox 360, PS2, and PC, published by Sierra, based on the Paramount film.
Stormfront had an ongoing involvement in the development of games for Interactive television since its first experiments on Florida cable systems in 1990, and produced demos for companies including OpenTV.
