Chair Entertainment Group is an American

People of the United States

The people of the United States, also known as simply Americans or American people, are the inhabitants or citizens of the United States. The United States is a multi-ethnic nation, home to people of different ethnic and national backgrounds...

 video game developer

Video game developer

A video game developer is a software developer that creates video games. A developer may specialize in a certain video game console, such as Nintendo's Wii, Microsoft's Xbox 360, Sony's PlayStation 3, or may develop for a variety of systems, including personal computers.Most developers also...

 based in Salt Lake City, Utah

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

.

History

Chair Entertainment Group was formed in 2005 by Advent Rising

Advent Rising

Advent Rising is a third-person, science fiction action-adventure video game. It was developed by GlyphX Games and published by Majesco. The game was released on May 31, 2005 for Xbox and on August 9, 2005 for Microsoft Windows. The story of this game was created by Donald Mustard, and featured a...

creators, Donald and Geremy Mustard, CEO Ryan Holmes, and key members from the core design team behind Advent Rising. Soon after, Chair licensed the literary rights to its Empire property to best-selling author Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card

Orson Scott Card is an American author, critic, public speaker, essayist, columnist, and political activist. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the...

. The novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 Empire

Empire (2006 novel)

Empire is a speculative fiction novel by Orson Scott Card. It tells the story of a possible second American Civil War, this time between the Right Wing and Left Wing in the near future. It is the first of the two books in The Empire duet, followed by Hidden Empire with the video game Shadow...

was published by Tor Books and debuted as a New York Times Best-Seller in November 2006. Card has since released the literary sequel Hidden Empire

Hidden Empire

Hidden Empire is a science fiction novel by Orson Scott Card. It is the second book in The Empire duet.-Plot summary:The war of words between right and left collapsed into a shooting war, and raged between the high-technology weapons on each side, devastating cities and overrunning the...

and committed to writing additional novels for the series. Chair also secured an option with Joel Silver

Joel Silver

Joel Silver is an American Hollywood film producer, co-creator of the sport of Ultimate, co-founder of Dark Castle Entertainment and owner of Silver Pictures.-Life and career:...

 and Warner Bros.

Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...

 for the Empire movie, which is currently in development. Additionally, Chair has retained the rights to produce future video games and comic books based on its Empire property. Chair began production on its first Xbox Live Arcade

Xbox Live Arcade

Xbox Live Arcade is a type of video game download distribution available primarily in a section of the Xbox Live Marketplace, Microsoft's digital distribution network for the Xbox 360, that focuses on smaller downloadable games from both major publishers and independent game developers...

 game, Undertow

Undertow (video game)

Undertow is an original video game developed by Chair Entertainment for the Xbox 360's Xbox Live Arcade service.-Gameplay:Undertow features a 15 level campaign for single-player or co-op and two multiplayer modes for up to 16 players. Players select their race and unit type and are then launched...

, in the fall of 2006. Released on November 21, 2007, Undertow is a fast-paced, action-shooter that takes place entirely underwater. Upon release, Undertow won numerous E3 and Editor's Choice awards and was named Xbox Live Arcade Game of the Year by Official Xbox Magazine.

On January 29, 2008, Chair announced it had acquired the interactive rights to Orson Scott Card's novel Ender's Game

Ender's Game

Ender's Game is a science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card. The book originated as the short story "Ender's Game", published in the August 1977 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. Elaborating on characters and plot lines depicted in the novel, Card later wrote additional...

with plans to adapt the best-selling novel as a digitally distributed video game for all viable downloadable platforms. On May 20, 2008, Chair Entertainment was acquired by Epic Games

Epic Games

Epic Games, Inc., also known as Epic and formerly Epic MegaGames, is an American video game development company based in Cary, North Carolina. Its most recent success has been the Gears of War series of games, although it is also known for its Unreal Engine technology. It is the parent company of...

. On August 19, 2009 Chair released its second game, Shadow Complex

Shadow Complex

Shadow Complex is a platform-adventure video game developed by Chair Entertainment in association with Epic Games and published by Microsoft Game Studios for Xbox Live Arcade, and is powered by Unreal Engine 3...

, exclusively for Xbox Live Arcade. The game was published by Microsoft Game Studios and won more than 45 Game of the Year and 35 E3 and Editors Choice Awards. The game was released to positive reviews, with a score of 88 out of 100 on Metacritic.com as of July 10, 2010. Shadow Complex featured a story written by famed comic book author Peter David

Peter David

Peter Allen David , often abbreviated PAD, is an American writer of comic books, novels, television, movies and video games...

 and was based on Chair's Empire property.

On September 1, 2010 Chair's next title, code-named "Project Sword," was announced at the Apple Fall Event 2010. The game, Infinity Blade

Infinity Blade

Infinity Blade is an action role-playing iOS video game developed by Chair Entertainment and Epic Games released through the Apple App Store on December 9, 2010. It is the first iOS game to run on the Unreal Engine 3. Upon release it became the fastest-grossing app in the history of iOS, selling...

, a swordfighting title playable on iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, was released December 2010, and is the first game on Apple mobile devices powered by Unreal Engine 3

Unreal Engine 3

Unreal Engine 3 is a computer game engine developed by Epic Games. It is the third generation of Unreal Engine, designed for DirectX 9/10/11 personal computers , the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3, the PlayStation Vita, the Wii U, Android and OpenGL-based operating systems such as iOS and Mac OS X...

. It utilizes Apple's new GameCenter online gaming service. A tech demo for UE3, entitled "Epic Citadel" was released on iTunes the same day as a free download. On December 14, 2010, Chair Entertainment announced they had ceased development on the video game version of Ender's Game

Ender's Game: Battle Room

Ender's Game: Battle Room was to be a digitally distributed video game for all viable downloadable platforms developed by Chair Entertainment and based on the novel Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card...

.