Guildford, The Gaming Capital You’ve never heard of
You probably never heard about Guildford and that’s okay — Guildford is just a small town south of London with less than 80,000 residents. So now you ask yourself “Why did you call it the capital of gaming?” and here I will tell you the story of how this small town became one of the most important cities in the game industry and still is today.
If you played “Theme Park” in the ’90s, you owe it to Guildford. If you ever raced in “Need for Speed”, it’s thanks to Guildford, and that is just an example. The number of games that were developed in Guildford consists of labels like No Man’s Sky, Harry Potter, Fable, and many more. But like all good stories, it happened by an accident with a company that exports beans.
It all started with beans
The big hero of our story is Peter Molyneux, born and raised in Guildford he had a dream about making games. In 1982 he and his old friend Les Edgar decided to make a video game. The Entrepreneur was a text-based business simulation game, sounds interesting right? Molyneux went for self-publishing in 1984 and the game was a tremendous failure. The game received only two orders, one of which Molyneux speculated was from his mother.
The big failure made them retreat from game design and they started Taurus Impex Limited, a company that exported baked beans to the middle east. Luckily for them, the company’s name was quite similar to a different company named Torus Software that produced Networking software.
The similarity of names played right for Molyneux, and he got a phone call from Commodore International, a huge computer manufacturer that was a pioneer in the field of home personal computers back in the eighties. Commodore was looking for network software and mixed Molyneux’s Taurus for Torus software. Commodore invited Molyneux to a meeting and offered him ten of her new home PC called “Amiga”. At some point, Molyneux figured that they got the wrong company, but he wanted these Amiga PCs and so he never bothered to correct them. Molyneux and Edgar wrote down the software from scratch and avoided Commodore’s phone calls with all sorts of excuses until the software was ready. They showed the software in Germany and sold 2,000 copies, which wasn’t much, but it was enough for them to start a new studio for games called Bullfrog Productions.
Bullfrog Productions
Molyneux and Edgar established Bullfrog Productions in Guildford primarily because it was their hometown, but not just for that. As I stated earlier, Guildford is in Surrey County only 45 km away from London. A quick trip on a train, but that’s not all. Guildford is the home to the University of Surrey that opened the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP) two years earlier. That was the perfect technology research for the gaming industry. Bullfrog Productions had reached sixty employees and their presence in Guildford started spreading.
Bullfrog Productions developed their first game called “Populous”. It was a God game, a genre where the player is playing a supernatural entity and uses his power to influence the game’s world. It is a subgenre of strategy games and not a popular one back in the day. Bullfrog Productions were on the hunt for a publisher, and no one wanted to publish this game. Eventually, Molyneux managed to persuade Electronic Arts (EA) to publish their game and it was a huge hit. Populous was critically acclaimed and Bullfrog Productions expanded. Molyneux joined ventures with the University of Surrey, and they received many innovation awards from magazines like GamePro, Edge, Games, and more. The partnership with the academy benefited both parties and word spread about Guildford as an innovative environment.
During the 90s Bullfrog Productions received many offers but eventually, they decided to sell themselves to EA due to the big collaboration with the publisher. In January of 1995, EA bought the company and established her offices in Guildford. EA and Bullfrog Productions kept doing games together and Guildford can sign on games like Theme Park, Syndicate, Dungeon Keeper, and many more. Bullfrog Productions rose to 150 employees and almost took over Surrey Research Park at Guildford.
Surrey Research Park is expanding
Bullfrog Productions weren’t the only ones at Surrey Research Park. In 1989 four colleagues from the simulator research team at British Aerospace formed a new video game company named SIMIS. They used their deep understanding of aerospace engineering, physics, and computer science to create “Interdictor” a flight simulator that was unparalleled at the time. strategic elements were included involving details like demolishing bridges to prevent supply trucks from crossing and keeping an eye out for ships moving upriver with supplies to repair them. The company evolved to Kuju entertainment and developed games like Train simulator and were pioneers to race simulators that are being developed in Guildford even today.
In 1996 another company established its presence in Guildford, Criterion Studios was inspired by Surrey Research Park and the university. Along with a cumulative experience, David Lau-Kee decided to take advantage of this vast knowledge base that Guildford offered to game developers. The studio developed Scorched Planet, Burnout, and many more games until EA spotted their Guildford neighbors and bought them. EA took advantage of being a big developer in Surrey Research Park and kept her eyes open on new studios. Under EA’s management. Criterion Studios many games and still is today, Labels such as Battlefield, Need for Speed, and Star Wars Battlefront were made in Guildford.
Molyneux’s part in shaping Guildford is far from over. In 1997 Peter Molyneux ended his work at EA and decided to, well you guessed it, open a new studio. Molyneux’s idea was to make a lean and agile studio that will stretch games limitations. He named his studio Lionhead Studios and started developing what he loved most, a god game. The first game had so many delays that sometimes it looked like it would never see the light of day, but eventually the game Black and White was a great success and considered to be a fantastic god game until today. The game was published by EA, but it was a windows game, and that brought the attention of the Redmond giant to Guildford. The second game was an action role playing game called Fable. It was an iconic video game that is seeing a sequel/prequel/reboot by Xbox studios. This time, Microsoft published the game for Lionhead Studios, and they grew bigger with Black and White 2, Fable 2, and 3, but it wasn’t all that good.
In 2001 the stock market crashed in the “Dot Com Crisis” and Lionhead Studios needed money. They added investors that helped the company grow and in 2005 Lionhead Studios had 220 employees with its satellite companies (lean company remember?). In 2005 games were canceled and the company struggled. Investors demanded to find a buyer and Microsoft swept in and bought Lionhead Studios.
Science and gaming in collaboration
Now when Microsoft set foot in Guildford it was known that Guildford and Surrey Research Park are the best places for studios. After Lionhead Studios were sold many former employees of Lionhead Studios started their studio. Companies like Two Point Studios and Media Molecule are all Lionhead Studios’ former employees, but not just them, Peter Molyneux himself left Lionhead Studios in 2012 and started twenty-two cans where he is nowadays.
Studios are not the only gaming companies that live in Guildford. Do you remember CVVSP? The university’s division for signal processing? They opened Rocketdesk, an open-plan workspace for indie studios and creative companies. In addition, Surrey university received research licensing in VR, 5G and developed many creative studies and game design. They are considered a well-established university for creative arts and innovation.
Guildford grew to become an enormous town for video games. More than fifty new studios and offices joined Guildford like Hello Games, the creators of No Man’s Sky, Supermassive Games and even Larian Studios, which make Baldur’s Gate 3 and Divinity Original Sin. Guildford is one of the wealthiest towns in England, and many global real estate firms invested in huge parks and offices in the town. And to think it was all because of a simple spelling mistake.