g.o.d. Blesses Edge of Reality

On Monday, Mike Wilson's Gathering of Developers announced that former Turok programmer Rob Cohen (formerly with Iguana) and his newly formed development house, Edge of Reality, will be g.o.d.'s sixth founding partner.

The announcement took place Monday at the South by Southwest multimedia conference in Austin, Texas, where Cohen, Wilson, and other g.o.d. partners, Jeff Smith of Terminal Reality and Ritual Entertainment's Mike Hadwin, are all participating in a panel called Developer Driven Publishing - A New Paradigm.

As reported last week, Cohen, the lead programmer for Iguana - and one of the driving forces behind Acclaim's Turok - had left Iguana to start his own company.

If you're not familiar with Wilson's unconventional approach to publishing, Gathering purportedly holds the developer in as powerful and influential a position as the publisher. The g.o.d. model gives the partners a stake in the publishing venture. Wilson has already assembled a who's who list of developers, including 3D Realms, Terminal Reality, Ritual Entertainment, Epic MegaGames, and PopTop Software.

"Rob's incredible work at Iguana speaks for itself," said Wilson. "I know that Rob and the talented powerhouse he is assembling will design great products for whichever platform they choose."

For g.o.d., Edge of Reality will likely help the publisher gain a foothold into the world of Nintendo 64 development. Although no titles have been announced, Wilson says that the group's first two titles will be announced soon, and that EOR's first project will actually be shown this May at Atlanta's E3.

"Gathering of Developers is a unique opportunity for my new company to begin work immediately with some of our industry's top talent, while giving us a perfect support system for building Edge of Reality into a healthy, independent entity of its own," said Cohen in a statement. "It's very exciting to think that we can bring value to this amazing partnership by bringing our expertise on console development to their terrific lineup of PC talent," he added.