Castaway Midway Chicago team make indie fightback

An ambitious group of ex Midway Chicago developers have emerged from the rubble of their former collapsed company to start anew with a fresh independent outfit.

For at least a year, Chicago-based Phosphor Games has kept quiet about its existence, having taken on contract work for projects such as Bulletstorm, Gears of War 3 and Kinect Adventures.

Now it is stepping into the spotlight with its own triple-A project – one that is said to be a spiritual successor to a final Midway project that never went Gold.

Phosphor Games co-founder Chip Sineni told Gamasutra that its first major project, entitled Awakened, is being pitched to publishers.

In 2009, having buckled under enormous financial pressure, Midway sold most of its assets to media group Warner Bros. That left a Midway Chicago team out of work and its two-year project, called Hero, in limbo.

“Besides losing your jobs, it is like a friend died,” Sineni said of the studio’s closure.

“Many of us had two years of eating and sleeping [Hero]. Not sure if it is hope or denial, but you really try hard to keep anything of a team together.”

Though the Hero project hasn’t seen light of day, many of its ideas are hoped to be revisited in Awakened. No release date has yet been made.