Burst Entertainment’s “little game factory” in Center City

While Philly’s first AAA game studio launched yesterday, another video game shop has been in Center City for years, quietly working on its first title.
Based at 15th and Walnut, Burst Online Entertainment, founded by Damon Alberts and eCity Interactive is polishing off its first game and first gaming engine. The 14-person company has a few staffers in Mesa, Arizona, but most are located in its Center City office.
“We’re building our own little game factory up here,” says Alberts who was also one of the founding members of VGI Philly along with Play Eternal co-founder Mike Worth.
The company is catering to what Alberts calls the “core PC gamer”: the hardcore gamer that has an interest in strategy, card games and table games. Burst’s first title is Warlord Battlegrounds, a turn-based strategy game that plays much like chess if players could purchase different pieces and assemble complicated armies armed with items and spells (see Geekadelphia’s review here).
If everything goes to plan, Warlord Battlegrounds will launch in open beta this April and mark the start of a multi-million dollar game franchise.
The Game
Warlord Battlegrounds is a free Flash-based game that exists totally in the player’s browser, no download required. In video game parlance, it’s a “PvP” title that matches players up against one another with characters pulled mostly from fantasy novels like dragons, ogres and elves. (See the video below, which is from a slightly older version of the game).
[tech]v4OQlD5xx44[/tech]
The company follows the freemium model: free to play, but players can boost up their armies through microtransactions. Players will be able to purchase an in-game currency, which can purchase items and spells to help bolster their armies. Eventually, Burst hopes to have several games using the currency.
And, to avoid alienating its non-paying players, Alberts says many items can only be earned through playing time.

The Platform

In creating its first title, Burst also created its first gaming engine. Burst will release a handful of games in the future that are similar to Warlord’s free-to-play but full of possibles for microtransations.
“Next up will be a Risk-like game, maybe a tower defense game,” he says.
The programming and networking are falling into place, but Alberts admits that the company is struggling to create art for all of its titles as fast as his developers can program them. To help ramp up production, the company is currently seeking $1 to $2 million in funding.
“We want to be the premier persistent online gaming company in the world,” he says.
The game is currently in closed beta, though Burst is eyeing late-April for an open beta launch.