Blue-News

Where Blue Mars is Coming From

// October 12th, 2009 // News

There are many people all over the internet that are predicting Blue Mars to be a complete and utter failure.  Most of these people seem to think that they will be somehow excluded and that Blue Mars is going to be a “rich person’s game”.  We, however, understand that these ideas aren’t true, and firmly believe that Blue Mars is here to stay, and that it’s going to be wildly popular.  Why do we think this? It’s because of the people that it’s coming from and their track records in the gaming industry.

Here is a review of the management of Avatar Reality, the company bringing Blue Mars to us.

The founder of Avatar Reality, Henk B. Rodgers, is widely known for his role in bringing Tetris to the rest of the world outside of Russia, as well as being responsible for bringing Tetris to mobile phones.  Mr. Rodgers certainly has a knack for finding things that are going to be big!

Other than Tetris, Mr. Rogers has helped develop other games, as well as founding the Blue Planet Foundation, whose aim is “to change our world’s energy culture, to raise global awareness in order to develop and adopt practical programs to implement clean, efficient, and renewable energy and to create a global response to our increasingly urgent climate crisis.”  They, like Henk Rogers, are based in Hawaii, along with his other companies like Avatar Reality and Blue Lava Technologies, a company that is developing a photo tagging app that uses facial recognition to tag photos and create automatic slideshows.

Next up we have Mark Loughridge, Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors. Mr. Loughridge also has an impressive background in the gaming industry, his biggest achievement being that he co-founded and helped run Foundation 9 Entertainment (the world’s largest independent game developer) for a little over eleven years, as well as working with Broderbund Software.  Mark also has an M.A. in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts, as well as having earned an A.B. degree, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa in East Asian Studies from Harvard.  Along with being an expert in animation, Mark also has some experience with interface design from working at Apple, Broderbund Software, the Children’s Television Workshop, and Disney.

Jim Sink, the CEO of Avatar reality, has an A.B. degree from Duke University.  He also has a background with Foundation 9 Entertainment, having been a manager in the business and concept areas of the company.  Alongside that, he has also done some work with Microsoft’s XBOX Live, as well as Sega, Hudson, Nokia and Eidos.

Kazuyuki Hashimoto is the president of Avatar reality; he oversees the platform architecture of Blue Mars, as well as the strategic goals and objectives of Avatar Reality’s brave new world.   Mr. Hashimoto also has the distinguished honor of having been a former Senior Vice President of Research and Development over at Square Co., Ltd, as well as being responsible for the development of the 3D production systems used to create the widely loved Final Fantasy VII game and the feature film based on it, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.  Kazuyuki also has worked with Electronic Arts, having been Vice President of Technology, New Platforms.

Li-han Chen is the Vice President and supervises the development of the platform for Blue Mars.  Mr. Chen has served as Vice President of Engineering for AtGames, where he oversaw their game development and outsourcing.

Last but not least is Glenn Sanders, the always cheerful and helpful Community Director of Blue Mars.  Mr. Sanders has a history of organizing communities on virtual platforms.  For example, he built and promoted a virtual world and accompanying social networking site for EMG, Inc. when he was their Executive Director of Internet Services.  He also built a very healthy community for NuvoMedia when he was their Community Director.  Aside from that, Glenn also has some experience in having helped launch a company (Humanity Interactive) and help lead the development of their software, animation and 3D artwork.  Speaking of 3D artwork; it’s one of Glenn’s hobbies, and he enjoys using software like 3DS Max, Silo, XSI, Face Robot, Poser, and Zbrush, to make photo realistic 3D characters.