ARISTEN, INC. ANNOUNCES CROSS-PLATFORM SPECIAL EFFECTS SEQUENCER FXSTUDIO™ FOR GAME DEVELOPERS

Monolith Founder Toby Gladwell Reveals Partnership with Emergent Game Technologies

BELLEVUE, WA – JULY 2, 2008 --  Monolith Productions founder Toby Gladwell and Monolith’s The Matrix Online Lead Engineer Andrew Kaplan, who co-founded Aristen, Inc. in 2007, have announced FxStudio™ Creativity Suite, a cross-platform special effects sequencing solution.  Aristen also announced today that as a Certified Partner of Emergent Game Technologies, FxStudio is being integrated into Emergent’s award-winning Gamebryo platform.

FxStudio will debut at Microsoft’s GameFest in Seattle, July 22-23, 2008.  FxStudio supports PC and Xbox 360™ games.

“We developed FxStudio specifically for artists, engineers, and producers to solve the problem of creating special effects quickly and efficiently,” said Toby Gladwell, Chief Technical Officer at Aristen.  “The FxStudio suite enables their creativity through an elegant and cost-effective design.  Our partnership with Emergent Game Technologies has ensured that FxStudio meets the demands of today’s world class game developer.”

"The integration of FXStudio with Gamebryo empowers the creativity of artists.  It enables them to rapidly go from their effects concept to their in-game implementation, instantly taking full advantage of Gamebryo's run-time performance and capabilities, said John Austin, Vice President, Technical and Academic Partnerships at Emergent.  “By becoming a certified partner, developers can be assured that there is a product quality integration, documentation, and samples so they can easily use Aristen's tools with Emergent's tools and engine.  Emergent is delighted to have Aristen join the 12 middleware companies who have chosen to become certified Emergent partners. We are committed to providing our customers with the best total solution by providing integrations with leading middleware providers."

FxStudio Creativity Suite was built using a modular design with true multi-platform support designed from the ground up.  Artists can build singular effects and specialize properties as needed on a per-platform basis.

FxStudio Creativity Suite includes:

Ø       FxStudio Designer is a full-featured special effect sequencing tool; artists familiar with time-based sequencing tools such as Adobe’s Premiere will feel right at home.

Ø       FxStudio Processor is a standalone data processing module that strips tool-specific data from source files and outputs a packed data format targeting specific destination platforms.

Ø       FxStudio Preview drives productivity and quality by elimination iteration time.  Effect sequences are created and evaluated in near-real time. 

Ø       FxStudio Runtime creates and manages special effect instances.  Platform-specific runtime modules provide the API and data-management facilities.  

ABOUT THE ARISTEN TEAM

Aristen co-founders Gladwell and Kaplan serve as Chief Technical Officer and Chief Executive Officer, respectively.  Gladwell is credited as a developer on several titles including The Matrix Online, Shogo: Mobile Armor™, Blood, Sanity, No One Lives Forever™, MechWarrior® 2 Titanium Pack, and the LithTech™ engine.  Kaplan was Monolith’s engineer on Aliens Versus Predator™ II, a science fiction first-person computer game developed by Monolith Productions and published by Sierra, and as a Lead Engineer on Monolith’s The Matrix Online.

For more information about FxStudio, visit www.aristen.com and www.fxstudio.com, or contact sales@aristen.com.

ABOUT ARISTEN

Aristen, Inc. is a leading developer of creativity enabling tools and middleware for the interactive entertainment software market.  Aristen licenses FxStudio, a cross-platform special effects sequencing suite designed and developed to allow game developers to craft world class visual, auditory, and tactile experiences.  For more information please visit the Aristen website at www.aristen.com.

FxStudio is a trademark of Aristen, Inc.  All other company and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.

Media Contact:

Doug Mealy, Online Marketing and Public Relations, www.om-pr.com.