Gears of War is a video game franchise created by Epic Games, developed and managed by The Coalition, and owned and published by Microsoft Studios. The series focuses on the conflict between humanity, the subterranean reptilian hominids known as the Locust Horde, and their mutated counterparts, the Lambent & the Swarm. The franchise consists of five third-person shooter video games, which has also been supplemented by a comic book series and five novels.