Aliens Vs. Predator Dev Rebellion Starts Social Games Division

Rebellion, the UK-based developer behind console and PC games including Aliens vs. Predator and Sniper Elite on Monday announced plans to create a social gaming division. The Oxford studio's increased focus on social gaming comes as the sector, buoyed by Facebook's 500 million users, gains momentum in the face of high-budget "triple-A" retail titles. The move also comes just a few months after the release of the studio's first Facebook social game Evil Genius: WMD, which is currently in beta. Rebellion has also released games including Alien vs. Predator and Star Wars: Battlefront: Renegade Squadron. Studio CEO Jason Kingsley said in a statement, "The release of Evil Genius has given us an appetite to look at other opportunities in the area." "One thing that has become increasingly apparent over the last few years is that gamers can't be defined as just people who own consoles -- people who use social media like Facebook or use smartphones all play games and this is an exciting new opportunity that we want to explore," he added. Rebellion CTO Chris Kingsley said the company plans on bringing its experience on more traditional platforms to the emerging online social network gaming sector. "Evil Genius has been a fun and rewarding project for us and has proved that there is a lot of interest out there for games that don’t run on traditional platforms," he said. "Thanks to the internal technology we use and the great skills of our team here, we can bring our 18 years of console and PC games experience to this sector and produce games that reach new players who would never consider themselves to be gamers," Chris Kingsley added.