It would seem that nobody is smiling over at developer GRIN today, as Gamasutra reports troubled times for the studio that brought us the stellarly underrated Bionic Commando and the lackluster Terminator Salvation. After closing two satellite studios, now employees at the home office in Stockholm have been told not to report for work. Layoffs and bankruptcy proceedings seem to be on the way. It's a shame to see this happen. If GRIN does go out of business, however, I can't say that I'll miss the studio's creepy logo. Ever wonder what the deal is with that horrible smile? I'll let the company's website explain it:
The story behind the GRIN logo is often asked in interviews, but there’s more to it than meets the eye. When we founded GRIN the use of the “smiley face” was booming and we wanted to make an evil smiley instead; since most of them were very cute. So, since we now had created a logo for our company the name was easily born.
The gold teeth in our GRIN have a story all of their own. After every game we have created we add a gold tooth to our GRIN. As you may have noticed, we currently have five golden teeth in our logo and when Bionic Commando is released we will have six and so on.
What happens when we run out of teeth? That is the most common question after we explain the gold teeth. And that’s in the future, but platinum perhaps or we might consider piercing?
I think the company has bigger problems now than running out of teeth. There are/were some talented creative people at GRIN, and although Terminator was terrible, I'll continue to champion Bionic Commando and its downloadable brother, the recently patched Bionic Commando: Rearmed, until the end of time. Here's hoping someone can step in and save the company from completely falling apart or, at the very least, find new places for the displaced staff to shine.
