Three of Halo's most popular strategy game mods join forces to create Chokepoint Games, a fan dev studio, and tease a new joint project: an ARMA 3 mod.

Posted by Unikraken on Dec 27th, 2019



Today, the teams behind Sins of the Prophets, Sins of a Galactic Empire, Operation: HOMEFRONT, and Evolutions: Real-Time Strategy Evolved — renowned mods for Sins of a Solar Empire, Homeworld, and Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars respectively — are proud to announce that they are joining forces to create Chokepoint Games, a fan development studio to pool their collective knowledge, talent, and skill.

Previously, each mod team operated under different fan studio names: Slugfest Studios, Broken Line Studios, and 363 Productions; however, the overlap of staffing between these projects was extremely high and each team’s leadership worked in concert with one another throughout the development process for each project (going so far as to deconflict release schedules). The reality is that these teams shared so much manpower and planning that they were essentially one large group and the separation was largely due to precedent and modding norms.

The sharing of resources and manpower became more pronounced last year as several members from each team began working together on a new modding project for Arma 3. The line between who worked where became much fuzzier after that point. Discussion about the appropriate home for this new project started to cement and it was decided that Slugfest would “own” the new mod. Credit and attribution are important in modding because these projects are often centerpiece items on portfolios for aspiring game developers, so these types of discussions are natural when enough people are involved.

With the understanding that Slugfest was about to become more public-facing, we realized that Slugfest’s studio name should change due to legal concerns with younger, but more official, entities with that name. As we continued to work on our respective projects and shared resources for the joint project it became clearer that it would benefit us all to become a unified studio, share a digital workspace, and formalize our unified planning. So, the decision was made among the studio heads that we would form one studio under the name Chokepoint Games. Each mod still has a coherent development team within Chokepoint, but with a unified workspace, the flow of information and assistance between these projects is more fluid.

A chokepoint is an area where a combined force can utilize a team of limited manning to maximize its force projection and increase their overall effect on the battlefield. This term felt like it rung true for what we’re trying to do with this new experiment. We’re all working together, to varying degrees, to bring you the finest Halo mods we can muster. And maybe someday more.

Above we mentioned a joint project for Arma 3, as that was the catalyst for much of this discussion, but we’re not quite ready to talk about that project yet. Keep your ear to the ground and early next year we’ll begin directing you to the appropriate places to get caught up on what we’ve been doing when we’re not starside.

Thank you for your continued support and patience,

Unikraken

Studio Head, Chokepoint Games