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Ritual Entertainment was an American video game developer established in 1996 by Robert Atkins, Mark Dochtermann, Jim Dosé, Richard 'Levelord' Gray, Michael Hadwin, Harry Miller, and Tom Mustaine. Based in Dallas, Texas, Ritual Entertainment was formerly known as Hipnotic Interactive, during which period they began development of their signature video game SiN. Members of the Ritual Entertainment development team have contributed assets to other games such as American McGee's Alice, Medal of Honor: Airborne, Tomb Raider: Legend, and 25 to Life, and are also the creators of "Übertools" for id Tech 3, which has been licensed for a number of other games. On January 24, 2007, developer MumboJumbo announced the acquisition of Ritual Entertainment.[3] With this acquisition, Ritual's focus on traditional action-oriented games was changed to casual games, essentially "stalling" Ritual's latest game series, SiN Episodes, after releasing only one episode out of a planned nine. The purchase followed months of departures of several key employees, including chief executive officer Steve Nix, who became director of business development at id Software, vice president and co-founder Tom Mustaine, who left to found Escalation Studios. Several months after the acquisition, community relations manager Steve Hessel left the company to join Splash Damage. Prior to the announcement, on December 6, 2006, Ritual announced the appointment of Ken Harward as the company's new studio director.[6] Following the company's closure, many of the deveopers have left to other companies such as id Software, Gearbox Software, Nerve Software, Escalation Studios, and the now-defunct Paradigm Entertainment.
