News
Sierra and Impressions Games Announce Emperor: Rise of
the Middle Kingdom(tm)
First City-Building Game to Offer Multiplayer Competition
BELLEVUE, WA (February 12, 2002) - Sierra Entertainment, Inc., a studio of Vivendi Universal Publishing, and Impressions Games today celebrated the Chinese New Year by announcing the development of "Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom(tm)," the newest addition to their award-winning City Building Series(tm) of games. Due on store shelves this Fall, Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom takes aspiring city governors to ancient China, adding several revolutionary features, including multiplayer gameplay, a first in the city-building genre.
"Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom represents a huge leap for anyone who has ever played a city-building game," said Alex Rodberg, brand manager for Impressions' City-Building line of games. "In online play, gamers control neighboring cities and can form alliances, trade needed goods, send in spies and emissaries, invade each other, or work together on a massive project like the Grand Canal. There has never been a game like this."
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom brings city builders inside the Great Wall of China. Leaving the Mediterranean behind, the city-building series makes its first foray into Asia and immerses the player in brand new surroundings. China has existed for over 4,000 years, but its 4,000 year history has been marked with new technologies and ideas replacing - or enhancing - the old. This is the world in which the player will take the reigns of leadership and take their cities through the twists and turns of Chinese history.
Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom offers gamers their first opportunity to play a city building game with their friends, online via the Internet. A great variety of both collaborative and competitive multiplayer games will be offered. Players may need to collaborate in building one of China's engineering marvels, or they may share a common goal to attain a certain level of affluence. In competitive multiplay, players take sides - or may be a side unto themselves - and fight for sole power over China. "We're really excited to see what gamers will come up with in multiplayer mode, so we're leaving options open for them to invent their own types of gameplay," added Jon Payne, producer for the game at Impressions Games.
About Impressions Games
Impressions Games has been a leading developer of strategy games for over ten years, with offices in Cambridge, MA. Impressions Games has created some of the most innovative, best-selling titles in the interactive entertainment industry, including the Lords of the Realm(r) series, Lords of Magic(r), Robert E. Lee: Civil War General(, Civil War Generals 2: Grant, Lee, Sherman(, and the Impressions' City Building Series(tm) which is comprised of the Caesar(tm) line of games, Pharaoh(tm), Pharaoh Official Expansion: Cleopatra(tm), Zeus(tm): Master of Olympus(tm), and Poseidon(tm). More information can be found at
http://www.impressionsgames.com.About Breakaway Games Ltd.
BreakAway designs and develops retail and online games for all platforms with an emphasis on strategy, sports and historical simulations. The company also develops proprietary military simulations for the Department of Defense and others. Founded in 1998 by industry veteran Doug Whatley, the company has developed the critically acclaimed titles "Pharoah Official Expansion: Cleopatra," "Tropico: Paradise Island," "Waterloo: Napoleon's Last Battle," and "Sid Meier's Antietam," among others. For more information about BreakAway Games, please visit <
http://www.breakawaygames.com/>About Sierra
Sierra On-Line, Inc.
http://www.sierra.com, a studio of Vivendi Universal Publishing and part of its Games division, is one of the original developers and largest worldwide publishers of interactive entertainment and productivity software. Sierra is renowned for releasing critically acclaimed and award winning titles that represent a wide variety of computer entertainment on both next generation console and PC platforms.About Vivendi Universal Publishing
Vivendi Universal Publishing (VU Publishing), the publishing division of the world's second largest communications group (Vivendi Universal), is an international leader in multi-platform publishing and content distribution. As one of the top three players in the global publishing market and the only publisher with an international reach, the Company's key content areas include literature, reference, education, games and consumer press. VU Publishing publishes content in four major languages, including English, French, Spanish and Portuguese, and has strong local publishing brands, including Anaya, Atica, Houghton Mifflin, Knowledge Adventure, Larousse, Nathan and Scipione. In the games category, VU Publishing is a leading publisher of online, PC and console-based games. Its studios include Blizzard Entertainment, The Flipside Network, Sierra and Universal Interactive.
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