Related Research Articles
Activision Publishing, Inc. is an American video game publisher based in Santa Monica, California. It serves as the publishing business for its parent company, Activision Blizzard, and consists of several subsidiary studios. Activision is one of the largest third-party video game publishers in the world and was the top United States publisher in 2016.
MicroProse is an American video game publisher and developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the Civilization and X-COM series. Most of their internally developed titles were vehicle simulation and strategy games.
Hardwar is a 1998 science fiction flight simulation computer game developed by The Software Refinery and published by Gremlin Interactive. In the US, the game was distributed by Interplay under license. The box artwork and styling for game was created by The Designers Republic, who also worked on the Wipeout series. The soundtrack was provided by artists signed to the Warp Records label. Funbox Media digitally re-released Hardwar via ZOOM-Platform.com on September 17th, 2021.
Premier Manager is a series of a football management video games started in 1992. Published by Gremlin Interactive, it was first developed by Realms of Fantasy, later passed to Spanish company Dinamic Multimedia. The later games were later published and developed by Zoo Digital Publishing, who bought the rights from Infogrames and hired some members of the original Gremlin staff. The latest releases in the series were developed by Urbanscan Limited, a company established by Gremlin founder Ian Stewart.
Sensible Software was a British software company founded by Jon Hare and Chris Yates that was active from March 1986 to June 1999. It released seven number-one hit games and won numerous industry awards.
Star Trek: Birth of the Federation is a 4X turn-based strategy video game developed by MicroProse and published by Hasbro Interactive. The game was initially released in 1999 for Windows personal computers.
Gremlin Graphics Software Limited, later Gremlin Interactive Limited and ultimately Infogrames Studios Limited was a British software house based in Sheffield, working mostly in the home computer market. Like many software houses established in the 1980s, their primary market was the 8-bit range of computers such as the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, MSX, Commodore 16 and Commodore 64. The company was acquired by French video game publisher Infogrames in 1999, and was renamed Infogrames Studios in 2000. Infogrames Studios closed down in 2003.
Graftgold was an independent computer game developer that came to prominence in the 1980s, producing numerous computer games on a variety of 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit platforms.
Slipstream 5000 is a 3D airplane combat/racing video game developed by The Software Refinery and published by Gremlin Interactive for IBM PC compatible computers in July 1995.
Ben Daglish was an English composer and musician. Born in London, his parents moved to Sheffield when he was one year old. He was known for creating many soundtracks for home computer games during the 1980s, including such as The Last Ninja, Trap, Krakout, and Deflektor. Daglish teamed up with fellow C64 musician and prolific programmer Tony Crowther, forming W.E.M.U.S.I.C., which stood for "We Make Use of Sound in Computers". Daglish had attended the same school as Crowther. Daglish mostly worked freelance but was employed by Gremlin Graphics for a couple of years.
Toys for Bob, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Novato, California. As the creators of the award-winning Star Control and Skylanders series, the studio originated as a partnership between Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford. They had separately attended the University of California, Berkeley in the late 1970s, before entering the video game industry in the early 1980s. They later met through mutual friends in 1988, when Reiche was seeking a programmer to develop Star Control for Accolade. This led to the creation of their partnership in 1989 and the debut of Star Control in 1990. The release was considered a landmark science fiction game and led to the 1992 sequel Star Control II, which greatly expanded the series' story and scale. Star Control II is celebrated as one of the greatest games of all time and is featured on several "best of" lists for music, writing, world design, and character design.
There have been numerous Monopoly video games based on the core game mechanics of Parker Brothers and Hasbro's board game Monopoly. They have been developed by numerous teams and released on multiple platforms over 35+ years.
Star Wars: DroidWorks is a 1998 edutainment computer game and the premiere title from LucasArts subsidiary Lucas Learning. It uses the same engine as LucasArts' previous title Star Wars: Jedi Knight. The creators aimed to create a game that would be both appealing and nonviolent. The game's original release date was moved up by months, which resulted in the development team cutting some planned game features.
Vektor Grafix was a British computer game development company led by John Lewis and Andy Craven. Vektor Grafix was founded by Craven and Danny Gallagher in 1986. Their first release were home ports of the Star Wars arcade games. The Leeds-based company then went on to become a developer of mostly 3D simulation games and was eventually bought by MicroProse in July 1992, becoming their development studio.
Barry Leitch is a Scottish video game music composer, responsible for the music in many games spanning multiple consoles and personal computers. Most notable is his work from the Lotus Turbo Challenge, TFX, Gauntlet Legends, Gauntlet Dark Legacy, Top Gear, and Rush video game series.
Dominic Robinson is a computer game programmer. He came to prominence as an in-house programmer for Hewson Consultants when he converted Uridium to the Spectrum in 1986. This was followed by another classic Spectrum shoot-em up, Zynaps, and a puzzle/shooter, Anarchy, both of which were released in 1987. After leaving Hewson, he joined Graftgold to work on the Spectrum conversion of Flying Shark, as well as the Amiga and Atari ST versions of Simulcra and Rainbow Islands.
Eon Digital Entertainment was a computer games publishing company based in London, UK, operating globally. It was founded by John Burns, now of Electronic Arts and a former Managing Director of Activision Europe as well as senior management figure at Atari, Sega and Bandai. Other management included Sara Pelton of Ubisoft&Activision, James Cato of Take 2 Interactive and several other experienced industry management figures.
Video gaming in the United States is one of the fastest-growing entertainment industries in the country. According to a 2020 study released by the Entertainment Software Association, The yearly economic output of the American video game industry in 2019 was $90.3 billion. supporting over 429,000 American jobs. With an average yearly salary of about $121,000, the latter figure includes over 143,000 individuals who are directly employed by the video game business. Additionally, activities connected to the video game business generate $12.6 billion in federal, state, and local taxes each year. World Economic Forum estimates that by 2025 the American gaming industry will reach $42.3 billion while worldwide gaming industry will possibly reach US$270 billion.
References
- ↑ Magazine interview about Hardwar
- ↑ Crash Article
- ↑ Ciaran Gultnieks' bio, Mobygames.com
- ↑ Article/interview in PC Format - Best of British supplement
- ↑ "Hardwar FAQ - Closure of The Software Refinery". Archived from the original on 5 April 2010. Retrieved 28 May 2010.
- ↑ "CiaranG - Overview" . Retrieved 6 May 2015.
- ↑ "About". F-Droid Limited. Retrieved 6 January 2016.
- ↑ "Interview with Ciaran Gultnieks of F-Droid — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software" . Retrieved 6 May 2015.
- ↑ Mobygames profile
