Eventually, we filled the new office to capacity and had to move to another one, still on the Research Park. It was here that we actually finished Syndicate off yet it holds the distinction of being one of the only games I’ve ever seen people continue to play even after they’ve finished working on it. In fact that only thing that stopped us playing Syndicate was Doom. I’m happy with that.
The original Dungeon Keeper on the PC
Seeing as how we were no longer just a couple of guys doing this for a laugh, some things had to change. The BB guns were out as they were pretty dangerous really. So we all went to the local Tesco and bought these little laser tag guns instead. Then there’d be all manner of free-for-all shooting fests of a lunchtime or evening. It even got the people in the other company upstairs involved as, one day, we found ourselves getting shot even though we were in cover. Turns out, they’d seen us the day before and gone and got some themselves and were hanging out of the upstairs windows, picking us off. Needless to say, war was declared.
In between all the war and stuff, we managed to find time to release Theme Park. That game was an absolute monster – it stayed in the charts for years! The curious thing for me was the fact that it didn’t have the in-house following of say, Syndicate or Magic Carpet. No, this one was definitely Peter’s baby and it was his drive that made it happen.
Bullfrog continued to expand at a fearsome rate and, pretty soon we had to move again. The gravitational pull of the Research Park was still far too high and everyone was used to it by then so we up sticks and moved to another building up there. Sure, it wasn’t exactly central but it’s not as if we got out much anyway. Besides, the Tesco was only down the road and there was a hospital nearby to deal with all the horrific unicycling injuries that we sustained. Oh yeah – unicycling. We went a bit “circus entertainer” with a couple of new fads, namely riding unicycles and learning to juggle. Although some people were able to juggle very well and others could ride unicycles, we never managed to get anyone doing both simultaneously. At least, not what you’d consider successfully.
About here we enter a rather strange part of Bullfrog history. We now had more people working for us than we could actually count. Cracks were beginning to appear as the expansion had happened so fast, no-one really new who the new people were and this caused a bit of resentment on both sides. Previously, the company was small enough that everyone knew everyone else and there were only one or two projects on the go at once. Now there were about 80-odd people and at least 7 titles being worked on – from new stuff to conversions of previous titles. It was also the time of the merger with EA which, whilst exciting, also created all manner of new tensions.
226 days ago
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The second part of Alex’s feature will be posted next week.