HyperBole Studios Gets Behind Mage: The Ascension

Computer game licenses of popular pen-and-paper role-playing games can be lucrative deals indeed - just look at SSI's relationship with the venerable Dungeons and Dragons franchise as evidence of that.

In recent years, no pen-and-paper role-playing games have been more popular than those of White Wolf Publishing; its Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension, and Wraith: The Oblivion bring a darker-edged, contemporary (and in the case of Vampire, Anne Rice-inspired) feel to the pen-and-paper worlds of monsters and magic pioneered by TSR and Dungeons and Dragons. Those efforts compose White Wolf's World of Darkness Storyteller series; more than three million books in that series have been sold.

And now, White Wolf has inked a deal to bring one of its games to the computer screen.

Seattle-based HyperBole Studios (the outfit behind the Madness of Roland, the interactive movies Quantum Gate and The Vortex: Quantum Gate II, and the upcoming X-Files Interactive CD-Rom Adventure for Fox Interactive) has announced an agreement to codevelop an interactive version of White Wolf's Mage: The Ascension. The deal is to create both single- and multiplayer versions of the game.

A CD-ROM title collecting the text of White Wolf's Vampire game rules is also in the works, but the Mage title looks to be more than just an interactive companion to the pen-and-paper game. HyperBole says that its version of Mage will make use of real-time 3D graphics and a combination of first- and third-person perspectives, powered by HyperBole¹s VirtualCinema engine, the same technology the company is using in The X-Files title.

HyperBole and White Wolf have begun to look for a publishing and distribution partner.

HyperBole also recently announced a deal to develop an interactive title based on short stories by Stephen King.