Ex Project Myworld staff join new start-up studio

Three former Realtime Worlds staff have landed on their feet following the studio’s collapse by joining nearby outfit Electric TopHat.

Tahir Rashid, who worked at Realtime Worlds for the past 4 years and became lead artist on Project Myworld, has joined Electric TopHat as managing director. Joining him is Myworld staff Sam Philips and Chris Black

The studio, now six staff strong, is working on two projects due for release this year.

“We were made redundant when the company cancelled Project: MyWorld on Friday 13th 2010, we knew the company was in serious financial difficulty,” Rashid tells Develop.

He said the trip joined electric TopHat because “we wanted to make games with Ninjas, Shiny Robots and Space Hoppers in, so we thought, fuck it let’s do it, and let’s do it with our good friend Bert McDowell who had already had a company set up just to do that!”

TopHat founder Robert Bert McDowell, who was a senior coder on Crackdown, launched the company back in 2009.

“We have some projects for release this year, we have headed back to our roots on the Xbox 360 of which we will announce the first one shortly and we have an exclusive iPad title due for release in October 2010,” said Rashid.

“We have a simple ambition just to make cool exciting software that people can enjoy and earn some money whilst doing so. We want to try and do something different or a little kooky, games like Limbo make me drool. We have so many ideas that we want to do and joining Electric TopHat has given us chance to do just that.”

Offering insight into the fall of Reatime Worlds, Rashid believes the company’s collapse “has a lot do with the large amounts of money spent developing and launching APB, it was out of control and we paid the price.

“There was no contingency plan, even the backup money for MyWorld was spent. APB may have had a better chance if they had some reserve money, they simply ran out of cash, they were stuck and could not give it the chance it needed in order to succeed over a longer period.

“A real shame as it was a great studio.”