Our Heritage
Founded in 2009, we’re the award-winning team behind the Project CARS franchise, and era-defining games such as the GTR® series, Need For Speed® Shift™, Shift 2 Unleashed®, Red Bull Air Race – – The Game, and many other top-tier games.
With over a decade’s worth of pedigree creating AAA-games, the studio is a 175+ strong group of professionals working from either a central hub in London, offices in Singapore and Luxembourg, or worldwide via a unique and award-winning distributed development system.
2017
Project CARS 2
2017
Red Bull Air Race – – The Game
Red Bull Air Race: The Game, published by Wingracers Sports Games GmbH & Co, is released in early January. The game recreates the airborne motorsport series of the same name and demonstrates the versality and high-fidelity of the MADNESS engine.
2015
Project CARS
After nearly four years in development, Slightly Mad Studios release Project CARS published by BANDAI NAMCO Entertainment Europe S.A.S. The AAA-game is an instant success, selling over two million copies worldwide and setting the stage for a successful franchise on the back of unanimous praise from the gaming and motoring press. Project CARS is nominated for dozens of Game of the Year awards, including the Jerry Goldsmith Awards 2015 for Stephen Baysted (Best Original Score for a Videogame), and winner of the NAVGTR Awards 2016. The success fuels the release of a Game of the Year Edition.
2012
The Walking Dead: Assault
2012
Test Drive: Ferrari Racing Legends
2011
SKID Racer
In late December 2011, Gamagio releases its first game—SKID Racer—with a tagline that reads, “Driving the way forward in Browser Gaming!”. The game is a browser-based arcade fun racer built around HTML5 and WebGL that brought console-quality graphics to gamers using their browsers both on PC and Mac. With SKID Racer, the studio demonstrates its capabilities of creating both high-quality gaming and stunning visuals on browsers, a rare combination that proved the resilience of the MADNESS engine on the Web.
2011
Shift 2: Unleashed
In early spring, Shift 2: Unleashed, the follow-up to 2009’s Shift and again published by Electronic Arts Inc., is released. Slightly Mad Studios’ most visceral game yet, Shift 2 introduces the motif of the racing driver’s helmet-cam from where the player can truly experience the physicality and brutality of motorsport as it has never been captured before.
2011
World of Mass Development
After three years of development, CEO Ian Bell announces, in late 2011, a revolutionary and proprietary platform named World of Mass Development (WMD) that will fund a Slightly Mad Studios-developed game titled Project CARS. “It’s nothing less than a revolutionary new approach to game development and funding which allows us to make the game we want, without undue publisher pressure,” Bell tells the media. “The concept of WMD allows us to submit design ideas to an active gaming community, raise the funds needed to develop them, and get continual feedback from community team members that test work-in-progress builds.”
2011
Gamagio
In March 2011, Ian Bell establishes the Gamagio Division at Slightly Mad Studios, to develop mobile, social, and browser-based games.
2010
Develop 100
2009
Need for Speed: Shift
Slightly Mad Studios, entrusted to breathe new life into Electronic Arts, Inc.’s ailing Need For Speed franchise, release Need for Speed: Shift in the fall of 2009. It rakes in top reviews, quickly becoming one of the highest rated games in the franchise’s 20-year history and ends the year as IGN’s Best PS3 Racing Game for both Editors and Readers.
2009
Slightly Mad Studios
In January, Slightly Mad Studios Ltd., founded by Ian Bell, and with most of the core development team from Blimey!Games intact, purchases the business and assets of Blimey!Games Ltd.
2008
Blimey! Games
Following the insolvency of 10tacle studios AG, then-parent company of Blimey!Studios Ltd, Blimey!Games closes its offices.
2006
GTR 2
GTR 2: FIA GT Racing Game, the much-anticipated sequel to GTR, is published in the fall of 2006 by 10tacle studios AG, Viva Media, LLC. It rockets up the best-seller chart on the back of stellar reviews and word-of-mouth. By the end of the year, GTR 2 has claimed dozens of awards
including “4Players” Best PC Game of the Year, and GameStar’s Best PC Sports Game of 2006. GTR 2, like GT Legends, earns a place in “1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die” edited by Tony Mott, and confirms Ian Bell’s team as one of the world’s top developers of simulation games.
2006
Blimey!Games
In early February, Blimey!Games is acquired by 10tacle studios AG.
2005
GT Legends
GT Legends is released in late 2005 to universal acclaim. With a spellbinding list of classic GT racing machinery, iconic graphics and artwork, and near-faultless handling, GT Legends has gone down into legend as one of the seminal PC-based games in history, earning a slot in the book “1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die” edited by Tony Mott. Its success paves the way forward for the young studio.
2005
Blimey!Games
In May of 2005, Ian Bell founds Blimey!Games in London with the core of developers who had worked on GTR: FIA GT Racing Game.
2004
GTR
2002
GTR2002 mod
A core group of passionate motorsport aficionados get together online determined to create the kind of motorsport simulation they believe is missing from the market. Working in their spare time from home, this group of “modders”, going by the name SimBin, create the GTR2002 mod (based off EA’s “F1 2002” game). The mod is a massive hit. With Ian Bell at the helm steering a core group of developers (most of whom are still with the company to this day), the studio now known as Slightly Mad Studios is off to the races.
