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NaturalMotion

Logo: The logo is from the following website: https://www.naturalmotion.com/, Non-free logo, via Wikipedia3

British video game developer

NaturalMotion Limited is a British video game development company with development offices in London, Brighton and Birmingham. Founded in November 2001 as a spin-out company from the University of Oxford by Torsten Reil, Michael Buckland, and Tariq Iqbal, NaturalMotion specialises in creating animation technology for the video game and film industries. In January 2014, NaturalMotion was acquired by Zynga for US$527 million.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

Oct 15, 2001Founded1

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NaturalMotion Limited is a British video game development company with development offices in London, Brighton and Birmingham. Founded in November 2001 as a spin-out company from the University of Oxford by Torsten Reil, Michael Buckland, and Tariq Iqbal, NaturalMotion specialises in creating animation technology for the video game and film industries. In January 2014, NaturalMotion was acquired by Zynga for US$527 million.2

Products and brands

Technology

NaturalMotion commercialized their procedural animation technology, which they call Dynamic Motion Synthesis (DMS). DMS is based on a real-time simulation of biomechanics and the motor control nervous system. As such, it has roots in biology and robot control theory. NaturalMotion states that DMS allows for fully interactive 3D characters, as it is not based on canned animation. DMS is used in two of the company's products: Endorphin, a 'tool for creating virtual stuntmen' and Euphoria, a runtime engine. The first commercially released title to use Euphoria was Grand Theft Auto IV by Rockstar Games.

NaturalMotion's other middleware product is Morpheme - an animation engine for Wii U, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, PlayStation Vita, Android, and iOS. Unlike the company's other packages, Morpheme does not use DMS and instead provides tools for blending animations, inverse kinematics and rigid-body simulation. Some of the games that use Morpheme include BioShock Infinite, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, Eve Online, Horizon Zero Dawn, and Pure.

NaturalMotion Games

In 2009, NaturalMotion released its first game, the iPhone title Backbreaker Football, which used Morpheme to simulate movement and tackles. The game was a critical and commercial success, with a Quality Index score of 8.1/10 and 5 million downloads.

The company created a new division, NaturalMotion Games, on 18 November 2010. In 2011, NaturalMotion Games released its first free-to-play title My Horse on iPhone and iPad. It has been downloaded over 11 million times. Its second F2P game, CSR Racing, reached number one in Top Grossing and Top Free App Store charts across the world. The game made over $12 million in its first month. In August 2012, NaturalMotion announced that it had acquired the studio, BossAlien, for an undisclosed sum.

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NaturalMotion's CEO Torsten Reil announced a new 'interactive toy' called Clumsy Ninja on stage during the Apple iPhone 5 announcement. It is the first mobile title to use the Euphoria animation engine. The game was originally announced for 'holiday season' 2012, however it was delayed by almost a year. It eventually appeared worldwide on the App Store on 21 November 2013. On release, Clumsy Ninja became the first Application to be promoted with a video trailer embedded in the Application Store.

In October 2017, Zynga closed NaturalMotion's Oxford office.

From Wikipedia’s article on NaturalMotion, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Timeline

  1. Oct 15, 2001Founded Founded1

Sources

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