Chris Taylor (game designer)
Chris Taylor ( * in British Columbia) is a Canadian developer of computer games and founder of Gas Powered Games. He is primarily known for his involvement with Total Annihilation and the Dungeon Siege series. In 2002, he reached # 30 on GameSpy 's list of " Most Influential People in the gaming industry " ( " Most Influential People in Gaming" ).
Career
Taylor began his career in the computer games industry in the late 1980s at Distinctive Software in Burnaby, British Columbia. His first game Hardball II was released in 1989 and won the Software Publishers Association Award for Best Sports Game of the Year. More titles Taylors are 4D Boxing and Triple Play Baseball.
In May 1998 he founded in Kirkland, Washington, the studio Gas Powered Games, which is the action role-playing game Dungeon Siege completed it in 2002 and published via Microsoft Game Studios. A year later appeared the add -on Legends of Aranna, which, however, was developed by Mad Doc Software. The sequel to Dungeon Siege II was released in 2005, followed in 2006, the add -on Broken World.
In August 2005 it was announced that Gas Powered Games is working on Supreme Commander. It is the first RTS under the leadership of Taylor since 1997 and is regarded as the unofficial successor to Total Annihilation. Since Atari owns the rights to the brand Total Annihilation, but not an official reference can be made. Supreme Commander was awarded "Best RTS of E3 2006" and was awarded the Best Strategy Game Award GameCritics. The publication took place on 16 February 2007. In November 2007, still followed the standalone add-on Forged Alliance.
After Supreme Commander is an action RPG developed again. It goes by the name Space Siege and takes place in space. The game is to make the player prior moral choices and provide a tight story. It was released on August 22, 2008, but garnered a rather average reviews.
Demigod was the next project of Chris Taylor and his team at Gas Powered Games, a DotA -like real-time strategy role-playing game, which was released in April 2009.
On 12 November 2008 the co-operation of Gas Powered Games and Square Enix ( Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest ) was announced for the development of Supreme Commander 2, which was released in March 2010. Subsequently, the company worked under Taylor's line to Age of Empires Online.
On January 14, 2013 Taylor and Gas Powered Games launched a Kickstarter campaign for the real-time strategy / action RPG hybrid title Wildman. At the same time it was announced that Gas Powered Games was in serious financial problems and a failure of funding threatens to shut down. Shortly before the end of the funding campaign, in the night of 11 on February 12, 2013, Taylor, however, announced the premature end of the Kickstarter campaign for Wildman. The goal of 1.1 million dollars set has been reached by then only half right. A little later it was announced that the Belarusian developers Wargaming.net ( World of Tanks ) Gas Powered Games will take over.
Awards
- He was counted among the 30 all-time greatest game developers in 2002 from the U.S. online gaming magazine GameSpy.
- In 2009, he was counted among the all time top 100 game developers from the U.S. online games IGN.