Former Codemasters CEO Now Heads Monumental Games

MotoGP 09/10 developer Monumental Games on Friday announced the appointment of video game industry veteran Nick Wheelwright as CEO. Wheelwright was CEO of UK publisher Codemasters from 1996 to 2004, and served as non-executive chairman of Monumental Games since April last year. Monumental, founded in 2005, currently has three studios -- Monumental Racing, which is working on MotoGP 10/11 for Capcom, Monumental Online, which develops Football Superstars for Cybersports, and Monumental Conversion and Emerging Technologies, which is working on undisclosed projects. The company last year had to close its Manchester, UK location as plans for a grant fell through. Monumental also cut staff near the end of last year. But the studio is moving on and continuing work on its browser-based 3D MMO engine, Prime, unveiled last year. The toolkit is designed to be fully browser-based and compatible with Facebook, and requires users to download a plug-in that's under 1MB in size. Wheelwright said in a statement that Monumental is in "an extremely good position with its browser-based technology."