To this end, the Twelve Angry Men were formed. This was an elected committee that were supposed to take an interest in how the games were shaping up and offer support and guidance where required. The title was a bit of a misnomer as there were only ever 6 people on the TAM. The first project to make use of the TAM was Theme Hospital which, in my opinion, was a fine addition to the Bullfrog stable and one of the more original and playable games we’d done for a while.
A bloody battle, Dungeon Keeper 2 style
The main problem we had following Peter’s departure was dealing with Marketing. With Peter at the helm, we pretty much made whatever game we wanted and he’d bulldoze it through in a creative maelstrom of fury that no-body could touch. After he left, we had a real rude awakening as all manner of really neat game concepts were turned down due to a lack of Marketing buy-in. Creation was axed as “no-one wants underwater games”. Void Star fell by the wayside as there was “no point doing an RTS in 3D” a year or so before the Homeworld series came out. We started making a Magic Carpet 3 but decided to change to Indestructibles as, since Marketing had been after that one since Peter first mentioned a “My Incredible Superhero Team” years ago, we thought we’d be fire-proof. Turns out that “no-body wants to make their own superheroes” and “you’d need a license”. City Of Heroes anyone? These events made an awful lot of people regard EA as the Bad Guy and leave.
My final involvement with Bullfrog came with Dungeon Keeper II. I was brought on to the team to help with the design mechanics but, by then, the internal politics and my view that Bullfrog just wasn’t as much fun as it used to be meant that I left shortly before the end of the project.
Shortly after that, Bullfrog moved in with EA at their super custom new offices over a Chertsey – a lavish, high-tech glass affair set on a lake with its own bars, cafes and shops. A year or so later and the assimilation was complete - Bullfrog ceased to exist. Some of the awesome people stayed on at EA and are there to this day. Others left for a variety of reasons and quite a few set up their own companies. Lionhead, Mucky Foot, Lost Toys, Intrepid, Elixir and Big Blue Box were all founded by ex-Bullfroggers and you can trace the lineage of a few more companies since then back to the glory years of Guildford’s finest export.
I maintain that the Bullfrog days were the best I’ve ever had in this industry. I absolutely loved that place and what it stood for – innovation, gameplay and fun – and some of those people were the most talented in their respective fields you’re ever likely to meet. Despite my own romantic notions of returning to The Glory Days, the industry has moved on and is a completely different animal these days. Still, a boy can dream, right?
185 days ago
Nice article Alex, good memories flooding back. The Sausage Pub, Killer and others seem like an awful long time ago. The game I remember playing most was Quakeworld, just the one DM map that some of us played every spare moment, but it wasn’t as BF-wide as C&C.