There are few people like Michael Crichton: He studied medicine, penned books like Sphere, wrote movies like Jurassic Park, created ER.... What can't he do? Early Friday morning, Crichton announced his newest achievement: the formation of a game development and distribution house named Timeline Studios. The new company will use Virtus Corporation's OpenSpace 3D technology to build CD- and DVD-ROM titles due to release next year.

　　"As a computer gamer for the past 20 years, I've noticed a lot of 3D games have featured large environments - big worlds, a few monsters, some puzzles - but limited interaction," Crichton said. "Timeline is going to change this standard through fast-paced gameplay in a tight, complex, and highly interactive world."

　　And while Crichton serves as the company's founder, chairman, and executive visionary, he can't do all the work and has employed several veteran movie and gaming folks to help build titles. Timeline was cofounded by visual effects expert Michael Backes. Backes is best known as the display graphics supervisor on Jurassic Park and as a co-screenwriter with Crichton on the film Rising Sun, and he joins Timeline as the company's executive producer. Backes' first task will be to pick up start developing the company's first tite with Virtus founder, David A. Smith.

　　Others who will work on titles for the company include: concept designer Ron Cobb (Aliens, Star Wars, and Obsidian), producer Bob Griswold (Deathmatch Maker for Quake, HexMaker for Hexen II, and Deathmatch Maker II for Quake II), and engineering lead Rick Towson (the Deathmatch series and a host of educational games).

　　"One of the keys to achieving our goal of developing next-generation computer games is the OpenSpace 3D architecture from Virtus Corporation," Crichton added. "OpenSpace 3D is a powerful development tool that allows us to make games with dozens of characters and hundreds of objects with which a player can interact."

　　It's great that Crichton is getting into the gaming business, but it's not entirely new for him, as he helped create his first adventure gaming title, Amazon by Trillium, for the Apple II, back in 1984.

　　There are few individuals in the world like Crichton, and gamers can hope that he'll bring that visionary creativity to gaming - but we'll have to wait and see what involvement he has with the company. We spoke to a representative for Virtus who said that Crichton's involvement is genuine, and he is very much involved with the process of developing games.

　　Timeline Studios will run similarly to Virtus' other gaming venture, Red Storm. Part of Virtus' teams will work specifically on Timeline titles while Crichton and his newly employed team will have the ultimate say in all things creative. A similar formula was used when building Red Storm's Rainbow Six, which has made Virtus' technology well known among gamers everywhere.

　　The company expects to make more announcements regarding its first game during E3 in May. No word on if Crichton will be there showing off his game though - if he does, we'll find him.