The Game Factory

» see gamefactorygames.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the obituary ~

The Game Factory was founded in 2004 just outside Aarhus and owned outright by its parent, K.E. Mathiasen A/S. It published rather than developed. Titles went out through its own sales force in Scandinavia or through two wholly owned subsidiaries in Santa Monica and London, with the parent's K.E. Media arm handling some of the distribution, which is a lot of corporate plumbing for a catalog of children's handheld games.

The last release was Rubik's World for the Nintendo DS and the Wii, out in North America on 4 November 2008. After that the company published nothing. Its American and European websites sat untouched for nearly four years until the hosting expired in July 2012 and the pages turned into a message from the Danish host DanDomain, and the domains followed later.

The ending that can actually be dated is in the Danish business register. CVR number 20616148, registered as an ApS on 6 November 1997 at Åboulevarden 13 in Aarhus C, filed under wholesale of computers and software, with an end date of 21 December 2016 and a liquidator named in the address line: Kristian Tokkesdal of the law firm DELACOUR. The status field reads Opløst efter frivillig likvidation, dissolved after voluntary liquidation. Eight years passed between the last game and the last filing.

~ the case file ~

~ the license business ~

The model was simple and it was everywhere in the Nintendo DS years. Buy the game rights to a children's property, hand the development to somebody else and ship in time for Christmas. Garfield got four games and Strawberry Shortcake six. Code Lyoko, Postman Pat, Noddy, Babar, Care Bears, Bratz, Biker Mice From Mars and The Land Before Time each got at least one. The thing being sold was not the game. It was the face on the cover.

None of this was aimed at anyone my age. I was at university while that catalog was shipping, and the buyer for a Postman Pat game on the DS is a parent in a shop in Aarhus or Leeds making a decision in about four seconds. The review scores on these titles were mostly dreadful and it changed very little, because the person paying had already decided on the basis of the character and the price.

~ eight years in liquidation ~

The register is the only witness to what happened after 2008, and it is more interesting than the silence suggests. The company was not formed in 2004. The ApS dates from November 1997, and the register carries two names against the same number, K.E. MEDIA ApS and THE GAME FACTORY ApS, which reads as a renamed arm of the parent's existing media business rather than a company started from scratch. Nothing in the file says bankruptcy. The owners closed it themselves, slowly, through a law firm.

Wikipedia dates the company's death to July 2012, which is the month the web hosting lapsed. That dates a hosting account. The publishing had stopped three and a half years earlier, and the legal entity went on existing for another four and a half after the websites went, which leaves this company with three different death dates.

~ what is left on the cart ~

Licensed children's games have the worst survival rate of anything on a console. The rights were rented for a term, the term ran out, and almost nothing here turns up on a store you can still open. Garfield's Nightmare and Miss Spider: Scavenger Hunt exist today only as physical cartridges owned by people who were about seven when they got them, which is a better memorial than the company got.

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