Massive Black Inc. Projects and History

A look at Massive Black Inc. and it’s contributions in the video game industry.

A sea of NDA titles from countless developers including Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Activision, id Software and Midway. What is this, a list of titles and companies showing up at Tokyo Game Show?

Not quite.

These are the projects that Massive Black Inc. has been working on — and the business that Massive Black Inc. alleges ex-employees James Xi Zhang and Jenny Chen tried to steal in a civil suit filed with the San Francisco Supreme Court.

Massive Black Inc. is a company that designs, creates and provides original assets to both game developers and film studios, alike. These assets may be concept art, textures, 3D models and titles like Project H.A.M.M.E.R and LAIR number among their credits. Massive Black Inc. has also begun development on their own titles, in addition to the projects they are working on with other development houses.

Where did Massive Black Inc. come from? While developers like Blizzard, Factor 5 and NCSoft often reap the accolades behind a certain title, assets and visuals from these games are often outsourced to companies like Massive Black Inc. — which functions like an artist collective — for design work.

Massive Inc. President Jason Manley certainly wants the company to feel like a collection of artists, since the company was formed in 2002 in Texas by just that — a group of artists. With experience in the entertainment industry reaching far beyond games and into cinema (Massive Inc. artists worked on Jurassic Park, Return of the King, among others) and other games like Baldur’s Gate 2. These artists didn’t just stumble upon one another, however. Instead, they met through the community at Concept Art, a website Manley founded.

Shortly after forming, the Massive Black Inc. founders ended up making a top 10 list of companies they’d like to work with. Their first work was for companies like Flagship Studios, id Software — at the time the company was based in Austin (they relocated to San Francisco in 2004 and now have offices in Shanghai, as well). They gained a reputation of producing high-quality designs and created assets for a huge variety of properties.

Companies approach Massive Black Inc. with needs during the design process. It might be creating marketing materials or textures (like in the case of Killzone 2) or it might be creating “99 percent of their enemy creatures, weapons and items from the concept phase through modeling, texturing, animation and look development,” as they did on Hellgate: London. Each project is bid on by Massive Black Inc. taking in to account how much work said project will require from its team and priced accordingly.

Massive Black Inc. vs. James Xi Zhang is a civil complaint for injunction and damages. The complaint outlines 11 claims alleged against Zhang and his co-conspirator, Jenny Chen. The other named defendant in the case is “Studio Takeover” — a term the court instituted to indicate the studio Zhang and Chen planned to form from Massive Black Inc.’s clientele. The case also names Does 1-50, preparing for the inclusion of other conspirators, if the ongoing investigation yields more than just Zhang and Yiqiong behind the alleged plot. Among the claims: Fraud, Unlawful Access to Computer Network/Tresspass, Interference with Contract, Breach of Contract and Interference With Prospective Business Advantage.

Defendant James Xi Zhang is a San Francisco resident who was charged with heading the Shanghai branch of Massive Black Inc. Jenny Chen is a U.S. educated citizen working in Shanghai for Zhang.

From the court papers:

Chen and others who are presently under investigation, formed a conspiracy to transfer Massive Black’s business (including inter alia, clients, employees, intellectual property and revenues) to a new business owned by them.

 

From Oct. 2005-June 30, 2005, Zhang, Chen and their coconspirators removed more than $100,000 in cash from Massive Black and placed it in a secret account.

Allegedly, during February, April and May, Chen was over-reporting expenses and then skimming from the top those over-reported expenses. Just before the alleged skims, at the end of 2005, Bob Brattesani of Wild Planet Toys requested a Massive Black bid for a project for Wild Planet Toys. Allegedly, Zhang bid on the project and the bid was accepted without Massive Black’s knowledge. Zhang had artists on Massive Black’s payroll, using Massive Black’s equipment working on the project. Funds for this job were allegedly siphoned to Studio Takeover.

The court documents also allege that Zhang and Chen intended to create false balance and tax records to further skim finances for their new studio.

 

In late May 2006, Massive Black became aware that confidential Massive Black business information was being disseminated outside Massive Black.

 

On June 16, 2006, Zhang and Chen were terminated from Massive Black.

After being fired, court documents allege that Chen still transferred approximately $50,000 to an account that the defendants referred to as “our piggy bank.”

The defendants have not yet been served with the complaint and accordingly have not had an opportunity to formally respond. Like most civil actions, Massive Black Inc. vs. James Xi Zhang will likely take several years to reach its conclusion.

Topically, the Massive Black Inc. case may seem like an isolated incident of an opportunistic attempt at a corporate takeover. It’s something you might see in a John Grisham novel. However, the alleged complaint against Xi Zhang does illuminate the possibilities of greater problems facing the game industry.

Xi Zhang’s alleged attempt at toppling Massive Black Inc., a Western outsourcing company, to replace with his own studio — the defendant: Studio Takeover — directly connects to the typical problems of outsourcing. In addition to killing Massive Black Inc., and as a result one of the most important art suppliers in the game industry, a takeover would’ve shifted labor out of the West and back to the East, where the labor is cheaper. Not to grandstand, too much — but the case between Massive Black Inc. and James Xi Zhang points at greater issues facing the industry.

http://wii.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3152235

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