Vin Diesel forms Tigon Studios

By Tom Bramwell Published 4 March, 2004

Currently working hard on Riddick title alongside Starbreeze.

Vin Diesel has formed Tigon Studios, the videogame company he first mentioned during a promotional tour to support the theatrical release of xXx, and is already intrinsically involved in the development of The Chronicles of Riddick on Xbox.

Tigon is helmed by Cos Lazouras, who was happy to clarify the company's involvement in the Riddick project, which is under development at Starbreeze, the Swedish team behind the critically acclaimed Enclave.

"Tigon has worked closely with [publisher] VU Games and Starbreeze in all aspects of the game's development from the beginning," he told us earlier. "Aside from Vin lending his face and voice to the game, some other areas we were involved in include story creation, writing of dialogue, directing cinematics, character design, and overseeing the game development from a creative standpoint."

Indeed, although the company will not directly develop the games it releases, Diesel reportedly wants to be very hands-on with each title, and as a long-time gamer himself he wants his games to stand up on artistic merit rather than because of film attachment or other predictable gimmicks.

That said, one of Diesel's key strengths in this field is his connection to Hollywood, something he's obviously well aware of: "I have been very fortunate in that I have the ability to get other incredible artists from the film and music worlds to lend their voices, talent and excitement to these games," he was quoted as saying last week.

The Chronicles of Riddick, based on Diesel's forthcoming big-screen outing of the same name, certainly caught our eye recently mainly thanks to its gorgeous visuals - something we've come to expect from Starbreeze - and we'll be hoping to take a closer look at it if it makes it onto VU Games' E3 stand this year.

Picture of Tom.

About Tom Bramwell

Tom is Operations director of Eurogamer Network and Editor-at-Large of Eurogamer.net. He joined the company in February 2000.

Read more articles from Tom by visiting the Tom Bramwell archive page.

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Comments (16) Latest comment 7 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Bill Gates is Evil #1 8 years ago

    Vin Diesel needs to be thrown into an active volcano.

  • Daryoon #2 8 years ago

    Is he a Ring of Power?

  • Bill Gates is Evil #3 8 years ago

    No.

  • Pirotic #4 8 years ago

    Whats the problem with Vin Diesel? its nice that an actor actually cares about the games based on his movies, i can't stand it when the 'stars' go on about how 'great' the game is when they have obviously not played it.

    I remember seeing Arnie wax on about how great the T3 game was

    "i've never lent my image to a game before, but this game was so great i gave them my full co-operation" (his words, i swear they used his likeness loads of times before but i suppose they never told him)

    plus StarBreeze are an ok bunch of people, so im kinda looking foward to seeing what they come up with. i still remember the 'good old days' when they made music trackers.
    Edited by 1 at 05/03/04 @ 00:19

  • Daryoon #5 8 years ago

    Does he have one?

  • Bill Gates is Evil #6 8 years ago

    Vin Diesel is a walking piece of cheese.

    His movies are soooo corny. Fast cars and skanky women? That made cools movies. When I was 9.

    I remember when I really started to dislike him. It was when he won an MTV Award for Fast & the Furious (horrible movie) and after accepting the award he said he "lives life a quarter of a mile at a time".

    I felt like puking everywhere. I didn't think such cornyness was actually possible. Vin Diesel has raised the cheese bar well above acceptable levels. The bar must be readjusted to normal levels, and to do so I propose throwing him into an active volcano.

  • Aretak #7 8 years ago

    Pitch Black was a good movie...

  • Blerk #8 8 years ago

    We need more meat-head plastic actors running game studios! No, really!

  • marilena #9 8 years ago

    I liked Pitch Black, much to my surprise. Diesel isn't a good actor but he does have the sort of charm that made people like Harrison Ford stars in spite of their lack of talent. He's no worse than Arnie or Van Damme, that's for sure.

  • renzo #10 8 years ago

    "He's no worse than Arnie or Van Damme, that's for sure."

    Or Stallone for that matter. At least you can understand what he's saying, whether it be cheesy "I live my life a quarter-mile at a time" lines, or putting in a decent (although quite small) performance in Saving Private Ryan.

  • Pike #11 8 years ago

    While i can't say he's impressed me with his acting outside Saving Private Ryan, where he didn't make a fool of himself, he does score some plus-points with me by being a D & D playing geek who really gives a shit about the games he appears in.

  • marilena #12 8 years ago

    Well, to be fair, I left Stallone out because I do have some respect for him. Not necesarily for his acting skills, but the fact that he wrote Rocky (and it was a decent film) scores him some points. He's also quite good at looking angry :).

  • Pirotic #13 8 years ago

    Last time i checked, Stallone had a freakishly high IQ and enjoys painting landscapes in his freetime. the muscles are just for making money.

  • Razz #14 8 years ago

    Wow.. OK. I think Vin Diesel is great. I loved The Fast and the Furious, A man apart.. etc. Hated Pitch Black tho.
    I guess I just love his character. I wish I had his voice.

  • inpHilltr8r #15 8 years ago

    Welcome, to the Xander Zone! *gag* *barf*
    Edited by 1 at 05/03/04 @ 23:31

  • #16 8 years ago

    You can 'work' with me if you want to, but it will probably not 'work' out. I have a lot of 'work' to do, you see. If you keep up the hard 'work' I'm sure you'll reach your goal someday, if you don't fall victim to a 'work' related accident that is. Good luck!

  • Homer Simpson #17 7 years ago

    What site?