Studio Focus: Frontier

I couldn't think what to blog about (I think playing RDR2 has melted my mind, I just keep getting Bon Jovi's 'Dead or Alive' in my head).  So, I've decided to write about another UK games developer, Frontier.  Frontier has a special place in Dad's heart, even if not so much mine or Seb's - he had the original Elite (released in 1984) on the Spectrum and then the Amiga (it had better graphics).  He says this is because he liked flying space ships and selling things, but I expect that's a simplification.  Elite has certainly influenced a lot of games, and continues to be a big success in its latest incarnation, Elite Dangerous (PEGI-7).

Elite on the Spectrum!

But it's not just about Elite.  Frontier's founder, David Braben, has been hugely influential in the world of computers than just the area of space-trading games, some fruit thing... (now I'm thinking about Forrest Gump).  But more on that later...

Braben released Frontier: Elite 2 in 1993 and in 1994 he founded Frontier Developments.  In 1995 the next Elite game, Frontier: First Encounters was released.  And in 2003 along came a massive new IP - Rollercoaster Tycoon.  Originally published in 1999, Frontier managed the 2003 X-Box port, and created the two expansion packs for Rollercoaster Tycoon 2, "Wacky Worlds" and "Time Twister".  And in 2004 the entirely Frontier-created Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 was released.

In the mid-2000s Frontier struggled, as the The Outsider was abandoned due to removal of publisher support.  (I wrote previously about the struggles Revolution had in the mid-2000s, before they started self-publishing.  And, like Revolution, Frontier also turned to Kickstarter in 2012.)  What was a dark time has, thankfully, turned around, thanks to changes like self-publishing and also opportunities to work with Microsoft on things like Kinectimals.

“What's interesting now, as the dynamic has changed, and we no longer have to persuade a publisher, but we have to understand those risks and take them ourselves,” Braben described. “I think the world has changed. We've seen a lot of new approaches to games, that I think in the older days probably would've been really hard to get through. And there are a lot of perceptions, I think, in how you market a game ... that you need a character and all this sort of thing, and without that it won't sell ... that lead to games going down a different route."

 - David Braben talking to James Brightman (GameDaily.biz) in 2018

The Kickstarter game in 2012 was Elite: Dangerous (PEGI-7), and that has been followed by a whole slew of successful games.  There's 2016's Planet Coaster (PEGI-3), 2018's Jurassic World Evolution (PEGI-16) and the brand new Planet Zoo.  You might have seen some YouTubers starting to play this.  It looks fun!  And educational.  ;-)

So today Frontier is busy creating new space-related content, as well as releasing new games like Planet Zoo.  They have over 400 employees working for them, with their headquarters in Cambridge, UK.

But the fruit, thing, then..?  I'm guessing you know I'm talking about Raspberry Pi.

In 2003 David Braben, Jack Lang, Pete Lomas, Alan Mycroft, Robert Mullins and Eben Upton met at a computer lab at Cambridge University and thought about the problem of getting more kids into coding.  Why wasn't coding being taught at school?  Where were the people they needed in the industry?  Where were the people applying to be students?  The world needed a cheap computer that was easy to program.  And so they created the Raspberry Pi. 

The BBC weren't interested, despite their history with the BBC Micro.  But Rory Cellan-Jones, a BBC journalist, recorded David Braben talking about the Pi and posted it on his blog, and it went viral.  The BBC still weren't interested, but there was so much demand that the foundation could do it all on their own.

There are code clubs, coding is on the national curriculum... things have definitely changed for the better.

(Check out this article in the New Statesman (2017) for lots more Pi facts!)

So, that's Frontier.  Not only have they made space-trading what it is today, they've hugely influenced sim-type games and David Braben and the Raspberry Pi foundation have given kids around the world the chance to have access to a cheap, programmable computer that can be used for all sorts of things. 

Hooray!

Follow them on Twitter @frontierdev.