Teut Weidemann
Games Market and Production Methodology (Lecture and Case Studies) Module 2 Curriculum Vitae In 1981 the Pet 2001 changed the life of Teut Weidemann. He became addicted to "computers", learning so fast that he even taught his teachers at school programming languages and ran the "computer room". Much later.... Teut Weidemann is now one of the "oldest" game producers in Germany being in the business for 18 years. He began managing freelance production teams in 1985 then was lucky in 1987 to be "Development Director" the largest German games developer/publisher at the time: Rainbow Arts/Softgold. During this time he oversaw the complete development portfolio, releasing over 30 titles in the next 4 years on classic "homecomputer" platforms like the C64, Amstrad, Spectrum, Atari ST, Amiga and PC. Many games became German best sellers and are still known among "classic gamers" today: Katakis, Turrican, R-Type, X-Out, MUDS, and Sperical to name a few. One of Teut's past teams is now one of the best console action developers today working for LucasArts and Nintendo: Factor5. Their titles are the #1 best selling Star Wars games like Rogue Squadron and Rogue Leader. In 1991 he left the company to join Apple and sell large scale DTP networks to gaming and computer magazines, among them Ziff Davis and "Die Abendzeitung". 1993 he joined a company inventing "Advertainment" games to build up their development department for clients like Kelloggs, 3M, german government, Kraft, Jacobs or Suchard. In 1995 Teut was asked by the physics nobel prize winner Dr. Gerd Binnig to help set up the production of learning games on complex fractal systems. He later joined Microsoft Games Seattle as a specialist for the German and European market. 1996 Teut finally founded his own company “Wings Simulations GmbH” after successfully showing his title "Panzer Elite" to worldwide publishers. In Mai 1997 “Wings Simulations” was one of the first German companies to sign a world wide publishing deal with Psygnosis, a Sony company. The game was released in 1999 and received much praise and awards. The game is still the genre reference, although over 3 years old. It was rereleased in 2001 by Jowood as "Panzer Elite Special Edition".Wings Simulations joined the Jowood Software Productions AG in Mai 2000 to tackle larger online and multiplayer games. The next title by Teut and his team is called "Söldner - Secret Wars". It targets mature online game players and is planned for release in Q3/2003. References www.wingssimulations.com www.secretwars.net www.jowood.com |