<story><title>Bullfrog After Populous</title><url>https://www.filfre.net/2020/09/bullfrog-after-populous/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>richardjdare</author><text>When people ask me what game developer I&amp;#x27;d like to work for I used to say either Lucasfilm Games in 1987 or Bullfrog in 1990. Bullfrog had a huge amount of prestige amongst Amiga gamers. It might not look like it now, but everything they did appeared original and innovative at the time. Peter Molyneux was seemingly up there with Sid Meier as one of the great designers of the era. It was only later that he soured his reputation.&lt;p&gt;I remember Bullfrog&amp;#x27;s programming tutorials in Amiga format [0]. If that was all you had (it was all &lt;i&gt;i&lt;/i&gt; had) then it wasn&amp;#x27;t enough to let you write your own games or learn enough to get a job.&lt;p&gt;I got my parents to buy me a book on 68000 assembly to go with it, only to find that the Devpac assembler from the tutorial didn&amp;#x27;t come with any of the OS include files, so I couldn&amp;#x27;t get past the second chapter. These kinds of setbacks were typical.&lt;p&gt;When I think back to those days, I loved the Amiga community and magazines, I loved the seemingly accessible, informal world of game development, but it was so damn hard to just climb the first step and learn to code if you didn&amp;#x27;t have much money.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.org&amp;#x2F;details&amp;#x2F;AmigaFormatIssue039199210_201901&amp;#x2F;page&amp;#x2F;n61&amp;#x2F;mode&amp;#x2F;2up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.org&amp;#x2F;details&amp;#x2F;AmigaFormatIssue039199210_201901...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>simonebrunozzi</author><text>For me it would be Steve Barcia [0], the creator of Master of Magic (MoM) and Master of Orion II (MoO 2). (MoO 1 wasn&amp;#x27;t as great as the 2).&lt;p&gt;I surely played thousands of hours just with these two games, over 20+ years.&lt;p&gt;A while ago I tried to get in touch with him (among other things I started a tech podcast and I wanted him as a guest), but I couldn&amp;#x27;t find any way to contact him. I messaged him on Linkedin, but never responded.&lt;p&gt;What a pity. I would have loved to ask him how was his life when he developed these two games.&lt;p&gt;Fun fact: MoM has an incredible mod, called Caster of Magic, built by this lonely Japanese developer. [1]&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Steve_Barcia&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Steve_Barcia&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;seravy.x10.mx&amp;#x2F;Wordpress&amp;#x2F;?p=2027&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;seravy.x10.mx&amp;#x2F;Wordpress&amp;#x2F;?p=2027&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Bullfrog After Populous</title><url>https://www.filfre.net/2020/09/bullfrog-after-populous/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>richardjdare</author><text>When people ask me what game developer I&amp;#x27;d like to work for I used to say either Lucasfilm Games in 1987 or Bullfrog in 1990. Bullfrog had a huge amount of prestige amongst Amiga gamers. It might not look like it now, but everything they did appeared original and innovative at the time. Peter Molyneux was seemingly up there with Sid Meier as one of the great designers of the era. It was only later that he soured his reputation.&lt;p&gt;I remember Bullfrog&amp;#x27;s programming tutorials in Amiga format [0]. If that was all you had (it was all &lt;i&gt;i&lt;/i&gt; had) then it wasn&amp;#x27;t enough to let you write your own games or learn enough to get a job.&lt;p&gt;I got my parents to buy me a book on 68000 assembly to go with it, only to find that the Devpac assembler from the tutorial didn&amp;#x27;t come with any of the OS include files, so I couldn&amp;#x27;t get past the second chapter. These kinds of setbacks were typical.&lt;p&gt;When I think back to those days, I loved the Amiga community and magazines, I loved the seemingly accessible, informal world of game development, but it was so damn hard to just climb the first step and learn to code if you didn&amp;#x27;t have much money.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.org&amp;#x2F;details&amp;#x2F;AmigaFormatIssue039199210_201901&amp;#x2F;page&amp;#x2F;n61&amp;#x2F;mode&amp;#x2F;2up&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;archive.org&amp;#x2F;details&amp;#x2F;AmigaFormatIssue039199210_201901...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bartread</author><text>When I was 15 I actually spoke to Peter Molyneux on the phone a couple of times.&lt;p&gt;In year 11 we had to organise our own work experience, and I decided I wanted to try to do mine at Bullfrog - this would have been 1991. My friend Chris and I had started fiddling around with building games using STOS and AMOS on the Atari ST and Amiga, and so I asked him if he wanted to try to get in as well.&lt;p&gt;We talked to our form tutor about it. He was very supportive, got the deputy head involved, and they let us make some phone calls (a big deal for schoolkids at the time) to try to get in touch with Bullfrog. We didn&amp;#x27;t get anywhere with Electronic Arts, their publisher at the time, who flatly refused to give us Bullfrog&amp;#x27;s contact details, but then I decided to phone up Amiga Format, explained what we were trying to do, and we ended up speaking to one of their staff writers or editors who gave us Bullfrog&amp;#x27;s number straight away.&lt;p&gt;A totally surreal experience then occurred as I rang the number for Bullfrog, asked to speak to Peter Molyneux, somebody gave him the phone and we ended up talking. After explaning to him that Chris and I were looking for work experience, I handed the phone to my form tutor who verified the whole story and, long and the short of it, Peter Molyneux was totally up for us coming on board for a couple of weeks.&lt;p&gt;Absolutely unbelievable and therefore, in my eyes, regardless of what has happened since, the guy is and will always remain a legend.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s where the story gets a little sad though, at least for me.&lt;p&gt;I hadn&amp;#x27;t mentioned this scheme to my parents because I thought they&amp;#x27;d poo-poo the idea before I&amp;#x27;d even started, and I just didn&amp;#x27;t want to deal with the argument and the discouragement. I thought it would be better to see if we could get anywhere with it, and then talk to them about it if it worked out.&lt;p&gt;So I did talk to them and, long story short, they wouldn&amp;#x27;t let me go and stay up in Guildford (I grew up in Dorset). But Chris&amp;#x27;s parents did let him go, so my final conversation with Peter Molyneux was to thank him very much for the opportunity, apologise that I couldn&amp;#x27;t come after all, but let him know that Chris was still going to come.&lt;p&gt;So at least one of us had a great time at Bullfrog, and I think it was probably the coolest piece of work experience anyone in our year group did. For my placement I was instead a teaching assistant in a local middle school, which was still pretty fun, but not as much as working at Bullfrog!&lt;p&gt;---&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I&amp;#x27;ve added the below in response to a reply on this comment, but I thought worth including it here as well to round out the story because I don&amp;#x27;t want to give an unbalanced view of the situation.&lt;p&gt;This whole idea of work experience at Bullfrog was always a long shot. I grew up poor. So I was disappointed that my folks said no, but there is no way they could have afforded to pay for a couple of weeks&amp;#x27; accommodation for me in Guildford (and I obviously didn&amp;#x27;t have the money). In my heart of hearts, I knew that all along. Really I think I just wanted to see if it could possibly work[0].&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also worth pointing out that whilst they didn&amp;#x27;t let me do that - and disagreements between stroppy teenagers and their parents are hardly unique - they did help me in a lot of other ways, and made plenty of sacrifices for my benefit, for which I will always be grateful.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;[0] Of course, if I&amp;#x27;d really had some hustle about me I&amp;#x27;d have taken a more bullish approach to the setback and gone on some sort of fundraising drive.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>