Mixamo, GamersFirst Partner For New MMOs

Free-to-play MMO publisher GamersFirst says it's struck a long-term partnership with Mixamo on 3D animations. GamersFirst's new development arm, Reloaded Productions, will use Mixamo animation services for new MMO titles in the coming year. GamersFirst SVP of global markets and PR says the company chose Mixamo because it "allows our team to do more with what we have." Mixamo offers a library of hundreds of customizable canned 3D animations, and enables developers to apply stock movements to their character models. Mixamo also supports Blender 3D models and the DAZ Studio modeling program. Mixamo CEO Nazim Kareemi said its online feature set is ideal for GamersFirst's particular production pipeline. GamersFirst claims 30 million players in over 160 countries, and has offices in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Its titles include Knight Online and 9Dragons -- most recently, though, the company's become best known for being the one to pick up Realtime Worlds' All Points Bulletin. It will relaunch the game as APB Reloaded, the company's first microtransactions-supported title, in the first half of 2011.