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Fire Photon torpedos at The Mummy... or just use the Photon Engine to power it

by: Ben Berry -
More On: Photon The Mummy

That title reads like a news roundup title, if you ask me, but I'm pretty tired so teh humourz is stretched thin.

Anyways, The Mummy was an awesome movie, both because it had action and Brendan Frasier, but also because it starred Rachel Weisz in flimsy dresses. What can I say, I'm a sucker for a tough sophisticated chick in a nightgown. And while the rest of the films after the first one went a bit down hill, including the Dwayne Johnson vehicles to follow them, it's never too late to make an average browser-based MMO for a once hot Hollywood property.

I'm guessing you can see where this is going. Photon announced that their game engine is going to power Bigpoint's web based MMO version of The Mummy. Photon has been racking up a lot of positive press lately so maybe this game will turn out to be a positive thing for the franchise. Hopefully, there will be some Rachel Weisz inspired pixels to drool over.

Portland, USA) - June 29, 2010 -- Exit Games, the leading provider of
multi-platform online game engines and services, today announced that
its network engine, Photon, has been selected by the global leader in
browser-based gaming, Bigpoint (http://bigpoint.com). Photon was
chosen to power the online features in a game based on Universal's hit
film franchise 'The Mummy'.

'The Mummy' MMOG is being developed by Schell Games, a studio led by
game design visionary Jesse Schell, with Unity technology. Exit Games
Photon perfectly complements Unity-based online game development due
to its .NET/C# development framework and the Photon Unity Client SDK.
When it comes to the development of large scale MMOGs or real-time
games, Photon is the only professional middleware on the market
providing UDP protocol support, binary sockets and an interest
management framework.

Photon's features are unparalleled in the market and with its latest
MMOG interest management, binary sockets and UDP support, it is the
ideal engine for MMO projects - especially in combination with Unity.

"Bigpoint is quickly becoming one of the leading publishers of licensed
games, enjoyed by over 130 million users around the world. For this
game, Photon's technology will help us handle tens of thousands of
concurrent users on only a small number of servers. This will not only
save us lots of money, but it will also help us to ramp up a hit game
with a robust network layer in a minimum amount of time, " says Dr.
Jan Wergin, CTO of Bigpoint.

"Before starting the development of 'The Mummy Online', Schell Games
thoroughly investigated the market for a professional network
middleware. We were impressed with Photon's feature set and Unity
support. We did our homework and we're confident that Exit Games'
Photon is absolutely the right choice for this exciting project," says
Jesse Schell, CEO of Schell Games.

"We are extremely proud that Exit Games Photon was chosen for such a
fantastic and large scale MMOG production," said Chris Wegmann, CTO,
Exit Games. "That is a great example of what Photon is made for. We
can hardly wait for the game launch to see Photon's high-performance
architecture being proved once more. Schell Games and Bigpoint really
went through a tough due diligence process and at the end Photon was
the winner. I think that tells the story."

The teaser website for The Mummy Online is available at
http://www.themummy.bigpoint.com/