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126-628: Frontier Developments plc. is a British video game developer founded by David Braben in January 1994 and based at the Cambridge Science Park in Cambridge , England . Frontier develops management simulators Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo , and has produced several games in David Braben's Elite series , including Elite Dangerous . The company takes its name from the earliest titles in

252-494: A cloaking device . According to Braben and Bell, Elite was inspired by a range of sources. The developers refer to 2001: A Space Odyssey , Star Wars , The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the original Battlestar Galactica as influences. Braben also cites the works of Larry Niven , Jerry Pournelle , Arthur C. Clarke , Robert L. Forward , Isaac Asimov and Orson Scott Card . While Bell has confirmed that some of

378-588: A database , Voice over IP , or add-in interface software; this is also known as middleware . Examples of this include SpeedTree and Havoc . Independents are software developers which are not owned by (or dependent on) a single publisher. Some of these developers self-publish their games, relying on the Internet and word of mouth for publicity. Without the large marketing budgets of mainstream publishers, their products may receive less recognition than those of larger publishers such as Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo. With

504-528: A supernova mission not found in the original. The Amstrad CPC conversion has fewer ships than other platforms, lacking the Anaconda and Transport, along with some minor differences in missions and titles. Ricardo Pinto , the programmer for the Amstrad version, explained that his team was given a 6502 hex dump by Braben and Bell, which did not help development: "In the end we wrote our version by playing Elite on

630-534: A North American studio in August 2012 in Halifax, Nova Scotia , Canada under the name Frontier Developments Inc. and headed by David Walsh. It closed in January 2015. On 3 January 2017 TMZ reported that the company sued Atari for not paying the company enough for royalties for their game RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 ; Frontier reported that they only received $ 1.17 million when they needed $ 3.37 million. David Walsh confirmed

756-693: A ROM image of the Mega Drive demo was released online by co-designer Ian Bell. ZX: 37/40 Elite received very positive reviews on its launch and the BBC Micro version eventually sold 107,898 copies. The game's popularity became a national phenomenon in the UK, with reports airing on Channel 4 and elsewhere. Elite was Firebird's best-selling Commodore game as of late 1987. Bell estimates that approximately 600,000 copies were eventually sold for all platforms combined, while Frontier Developments' Elite page states that

882-613: A Real Time Strategy game developed by Petroglyph Games was announced as part of the Future Games Show during Gamescom on August 24, 2022. It launched on the Epic Games Store and Steam PC storefronts in March 2023. On 14 June 2023 it was announced that a review into the performance of Frontier Foundry concluded to cease all future third party publishing efforts due to disappointing financial performance, with most games releasing under

1008-455: A [BBC Micro] and making ours look the same." This version included the "supernova rescue" and "cloaking device" missions, and refinements to the launch tube and jump drive animations. According to the lead programmer of the 16 bit Amiga/Atari ST and the MSX conversions Rob Nicholson, he did not have access to the source code because of contractual issues and had to write them "blind". All he had were

1134-437: A box larger than its usual releases, complete with a novella by Robert Holdstock called The Dark Wheel , a 64-page Space Trader's Flight Training Manual, reference card and a ship identification poster. The flight training manual was written in a style that took the rookie trader through the controls and various aspects of play. The original Acornsoft version of The Dark Wheel promised on its back cover that "[a] sequel to

1260-1151: A common platform-neutral core API. It enables optimal use of a multi-processor, multi-threaded environment. There is a framework for rapid development of tools to view, tweak and review changes to resources on platforms in live sessions. The 4th generation of Cobra has cloud-based analytics for data-driven games. The proprietary tools, tech and pluggable modules enable the development a wide variety of games on tablets, smartphones, PC and consoles without making employees unable to contribute. Video game developer A developer may specialize in specific game engines or specific video game consoles , or may develop for several systems (including personal computers and mobile devices ). Some focus on porting games from one system to another, or translating games from one language to another. Less commonly, some do software development work in addition to games. Most video game publishers maintain development studios (such as Electronic Arts 's EA Canada , Square Enix 's studios, Activision 's Radical Entertainment , Nintendo EPD and Sony's Polyphony Digital and Naughty Dog ). However, since publishing

1386-452: A culture of "toxic geek masculinity" within the workplace. In addition, the conditions behind crunch time are far more discriminating towards women as this requires them to commit time exclusively to the company or to more personal activities like raising a family. These factors established conditions within some larger development studios where female developers have found themselves discriminated in workplace hiring and promotion, as well as

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1512-418: A docking computer. Equipment upgrades include a fuel scoop, which allows "sun skimming"—collecting energy from the stars' corona —described by the manual as "a dangerous and difficult activity", but in practice a fairly simple process far easier than manually docking at a space station—and collecting free-floating cargo canisters and escape capsules liberated after the destruction of other ships. While making

1638-534: A drop in concurrent players and lackluster sales. Frontier shares plunged 20%. Attempts to widen their game portfolio didn't achieve the anticipated success in the past 5 years. Frontier stated it will refocus on creative management simulation (CMS) games. On 15 March 2024, Frontier announced that the publishing rights to RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 would be sold back to Atari, Inc. This was confirmed by their parent Atari SA on 2 April. Frontier began development of an in house game engine in 1988. Cobra uses C++ as

1764-571: A first-party company. As a balance to not being able to release their game for other platforms, second-party developers are usually offered higher royalty rates than third-party developers. These studios may have exclusive publishing agreements (or other business relationships) with the platform holder, but maintain independence so that upon completion or termination of their contracts, they are able to continue developing games for other publishers if they choose to. For example, while HAL Laboratory initially began developing games on personal computers like

1890-410: A fixed period and generally work similar hours as full-time staff members, assisting across all areas of video game development, but as contractors, do not get any benefits such as paid time-off or health care from the employer; they also are typically not credited on games that they work on for this reason. The practice itself is legal and common in other engineering and technology areas, and generally it

2016-403: A game on schedule. The complexity of workflow, reliance on third-party deliverables, and the intangibles of artistic and aesthetic demands in video game creation create difficulty in predicting milestones. The use of crunch time is also seen to be exploitative of the younger male-dominated workforce in video games, who have not had the time to establish a family and who were eager to advance within

2142-406: A game's profits. Current examples of first-party studios include PlayStation Studios for Sony, and Xbox Game Studios for Microsoft Gaming . Second-party developer is a colloquial term often used by gaming enthusiasts and media to describe game studios that take development contracts from platform holders and develop games exclusive to that platform, i.e. a non-owned developer making games for

2268-516: A home computer" and gave it a score of 92%, while at the same time it was a best-seller in the Gallup charts. The game was number 16 in the Your Sinclair "Top 100 Speccy Games" in 1992, was voted number 7 in the Your Sinclair "Readers' Top 100 Games of All Time" in 1993 and was voted the 9th best game of all time by the readers of Retro Gamer Magazine for an article that was scheduled to be in

2394-495: A hyperspace jump between star systems, the antagonistic Thargoid race may intercept the player half way, forcing the player's ship to remain in "witch-space" and do battle with the smaller invasion ships of the Thargoid. As the interrupted jump uses the full journey's fuel, the player may have insufficient fuel to subsequently jump to a nearby planet, trapping them in witch-space. They must either use an escape capsule, if owned, or abort

2520-460: A mail-in tape-replacement service to upgrade to v1.1 (marked as such on the tape label) that fixed this bug. A version for the BBC Micro with the 6502 Second Processor was announced by Acornsoft on 25 July 1985, this new version added several extras over the standard BBC version, including 18 ships in the player environment (up from 10), no loading from disc when leaving/arriving at a space station,

2646-564: A month or two later" the Acorn Electron tape version was released. The Electron's limitations meant the game was in black and white only, and several game features were cut including Thargoids and suns. Neither the BBC nor the Electron tape versions featured missions. Additionally, the original tape version for the Electron contained a bug that stopped Galactic Hyperspace from working. Acorn provided

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2772-506: A new Elite sequel, under the working title Elite 4 , since 1998. The company completed a successful Kickstarter campaign at the end of 2012, where the new sequel's name Elite: Dangerous was revealed. Early-access versions of the game have been playable by backers since December 2013. The full game was released to PC on 16 December 2014. Frontier Developments has made many other games, including Dog's Life , Thrillville , and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 . The company also made games for

2898-498: A number of means. These include piracy, trade, military missions, bounty hunting and asteroid mining . The money generated by these enterprises allows the player to upgrade their ship with enhancements such as better weapons, increased cargo capacity, an automated docking system, an extra energy bank and more. In the game universe, stars have single planets , each with a space station in its orbit . Stars are always separated by interstellar distances which cannot be crossed using

3024-408: A paid-for expansion season, Horizons , on 15 December 2015. Elite proved hugely influential, serving as a model for other games including Wing Commander: Privateer , Grand Theft Auto , EVE Online , Freelancer , the X series and No Man's Sky . Non-Acorn versions were each first published by Firebird and Imagineer . Subsequently, Frontier Developments has claimed

3150-437: A position in a medium to large video game company. An experienced game-development employee, depending on their expertise and experience, averaged roughly $ 73,000 in 2007. Indie game developers may only earn between $ 10,000 and $ 50,000 a year depending on how financially successful their titles are. In addition to being part of the software industry, game development is also within the entertainment industry; most sectors of

3276-468: A reboot to the 1998 turn based game Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate named Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters . The reboot is to be developed by Canadian developer Complex Games and published under the Frontier Foundry label. It is set to release in 2022. Additionally Frontier announced a sequel to FAR: Lone Sails named FAR: Changing Tides , developed by Okomotive and published under

3402-624: A roundtable discussion with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), the professional association for developers. Statements made by the IGDA's current executive director Jen MacLean relating to IGDA's activities had been seen by as anti-union, and Game Workers Unite desired to start a conversation to lay out the need for developers to unionize. In the wake of the sudden near-closure of Telltale Games in September 2018,

3528-407: A single publisher; one canceled game may devastate a small developer. Because of this, many small development companies are short-lived. A common exit strategy for a successful video game developer is to sell the company to a publisher, becoming an in-house developer. In-house development teams tend to have more freedom in game design and content than third-party developers. One reason is that since

3654-618: A special Your Sinclair tribute issue. Similarly Zzap!64 gave the Commodore 64 version 97%, stating that it was "a brilliant game of blasting and trading and is certainly the best game I've seen this year" in 1985 and the Amiga version 98% in 1989. In 1984, Elite received the Golden Joystick Award for "Best Original Game". In 1985 the game was awarded the "Best Game Overall" for that year by readers of Crash magazine, and "Game of

3780-403: A strong STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) background for women at the secondary education level, but there are issues with tertiary education such as at colleges and universities, where game development programs tend to reflect the male-dominated demographics of the industry, a factor that may lead women with strong STEM backgrounds to choose other career goals. There

3906-682: A unique case where nearly all parts of its labor force, including white-collar jobs such as video game development, may engage with labor unions under the Employment Protection Act often through collective bargaining agreements. Developer DICE had reached its union agreements in 2004. Paradox Interactive became one of the first major publishers to support unionization efforts in June 2020 with its own agreements to cover its Swedish employees within two labor unions Unionen and SACO . In Australia, video game developers could join other unions, but

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4032-503: A well-armed- and armoured spaceship), Alex encounters the basics of the Elite universe—including combat, hyperdrive and hyperspace and the deadly aliens called Thargoids. Finally Alex discovers the truth about his father and his combat rank. He also acts as an acceptable face of trading as his female co-pilot, Elyssia Fields, is an alien and wanted in several systems. Alex wants to avenge his father's death, but must exercise caution in tracking down

4158-473: Is also a significant gap in racial minorities within the video game industry; a 2019 IGDA survey found only 2% of developers considered themselves to be of African descent and 7% Hispanic, while 81% were Caucasian; in contrast, 2018 estimates from the United States Census estimate the U.S. population to be 13% of African descent and 18% Hispanic. In a 2014 and 2015 survey of job positions and salaries,

4284-462: Is also featured in Game On! From Pong to Oblivion: The 50 Greatest Video Games of All Time by authors Simon Byron, Ste Curran and David McCarthy. In 1991, PC Format placed Elite Plus on its list of the 50 best computer games of all time. The editors called it "a classic game that mixes solid 3D space combat with trading to create a universe in which you can spend many a happy half-hour bushwhacking

4410-436: Is among the longest-running video game franchises . The first game was followed by the sequels Frontier: Elite II in 1993, and Frontier: First Encounters in 1995, which introduced Newtonian physics , realistic star systems, and seamless freeform planetary landings. A third sequel, Elite Dangerous , began crowdfunding in 2012 and was launched on 16 December 2014, following a period of semi-open testing; it received

4536-449: Is expected that this is meant to lead into a full-time position, or otherwise the end of the contract. But more recently, its use in the video game industry has been compared to Microsoft 's past use of " permatemp ", contract workers that were continually renewed and treated for all purposes as employees but received no benefits. While Microsoft has waned from the practice, the video game industry has adapted it more frequently. Around 10% of

4662-533: Is generally illegal, companies often target their oldest workers first during layoffs or other periods of reduction. Older developers with experience may find themselves too qualified for the types of positions that other game development companies seek given the salaries and compensations offered. Some of the larger video game developers and publishers have also engaged contract workers through agencies to help add manpower in game development in part to alleviate crunch time from employees. Contractors are brought on for

4788-462: Is reached by undertaking a special mission to destroy a space station in a system invaded by the Thargoids. The player's reward for completing the mission is to receive the title Archangel and obtain a device that is capable of emulating anti- ECM broadcast. Versions for 32X and Sega Mega Drive were in development but cancelled due to Sony backing out of the project and lack of publisher. However,

4914-494: Is still their primary activity they are generally described as "publishers" rather than "developers". Developers may be private as well. In the video game industry , a first-party developer is part of a company that manufactures a video game console and develops mainly for it. First-party developers may use the name of the company itself (such as Nintendo ), have a specific division name (such as Sony's Polyphony Digital ) or have been an independent studio before being acquired by

5040-474: Is usually conducted in a casual business environment, with t-shirts and sandals as common work attire. Many workers find this type of environment rewarding and pleasant professionally and personally. However, the industry also requires long working hours from its employees (sometimes to an extent seen as unsustainable). Employee burnout is not uncommon. An entry-level programmer can make, on average, over $ 66,000 annually only if they are successful in obtaining

5166-639: The 6502 microprocessor were ported by either Bell or Bell and Braben. The Commodore 64 conversion introduced Trumbles (creatures based on the tribbles in Star Trek: The Original Series ). When the docking computer is activated in the Commodore 64 version and some other versions, a musical rendition of " The Blue Danube " Waltz is played, as a nod to a space docking sequence in Stanley Kubrick 's 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey . The ZX Spectrum version, programmed by "Torus" included

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5292-589: The AFL–CIO writing an open letter to video game developers encouraging them to unionize. In January 2020, Game Workers Unite and the Communications Workers of America established a new campaign to push for unionization of video game developers, the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), in January 2020. Initial efforts for CODE were aimed to determine what approach to unionization would be best suited for

5418-508: The Atari 800 they decided to collaborate to produce what eventually became Elite . They first approached Thorn EMI; the company's rejection letter stated that the game was too complicated and needed to be finishable in 10 minutes with three lives . Braben and Bell then met with Acornsoft; their demo of Elite' s combat and docking sequences impressed managing director David Johnson-Davies and other Acornsoft executives. The company agreed to publish

5544-456: The International Game Developers Association (IGDA), are conducting increasing discussions about the problem; they are concerned that working conditions in the industry cause a significant deterioration in employees' quality of life. Some video game developers and publishers have been accused of the excessive invocation of "crunch time". "Crunch time" is the point at which the team is thought to be failing to achieve milestones needed to launch

5670-508: The MSX , they became one of the earliest second-party developers for Nintendo, developing exclusively for Nintendo's consoles starting with the Famicom, though they would self-publish their mobile games. A third-party developer may also publish games, or work for a video game publisher to develop a title. Both publisher and developer have considerable input in the game's design and content. However,

5796-517: The Me Too movement and have tried to address the symptoms of these problems industry-wide, the video game industry has yet to have its Me Too-moment, even as late as 2021. There also tends to be pay-related discrimination against women in the industry. According to Gamasutra 's Game Developer Salary Survey 2014, women in the United States made 86 cents for every dollar men made. Game designing women had

5922-488: The Oric machines , that won the 2010 Oldschool Gaming Game Of The Year Award . Contrasting with these conversions, around 1999 Christian Pinder developed Elite: The New Kind as a modern PC port of the original BBC Micro version. He achieved a faithful port by reverse-engineering the original assembly written BBC Micro version and recreating a platform neutral C code variant from it, but at David Braben's request this version

6048-504: The Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) union doing work for video games struck several major publishers, demanding better royalty payments and provisions related to the safety of their vocal performances, when their union's standard contract was up for renewal. The voice actor strike lasted for over 300 days into 2017 before a new deal was made between SAG-AFTRA and

6174-490: The Thorpe Park theme park (holding such an event for a video game was almost unheard of at the time) and a competition to be among the first to achieve the status of "Elite". The story tells of a young starship pilot named Alex Ryder, whose father Jason is killed when their merchant ship is attacked by a notorious pirate. In trying to understand and avenge his father's death and achieve an "iron ass" (a space-trader's term for

6300-646: The Wallace and Gromit franchise, and has released Wallace & Gromit in Project Zoo , and a tie-in game for Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit . In 2008, Frontier released LostWinds , a launch title for Nintendo's WiiWare platform. It was followed up with a sequel in 2009, entitled LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias . In 2010, Frontier developed Kinectimals for Microsoft's Kinect controller on

6426-623: The Xbox 360 . In 2011 Kinect Disneyland Adventures and Kinectimals: Now With Bears were developed, along with ports of LostWinds for iOS and Kinectimals for iOS and Windows Phone . In 2012, Frontier released Coaster Crazy , and started to work on Elite: Dangerous Kickstarter, which successfully closed at the start of 2013. In 2013, Frontier released Xbox One and Xbox 360 exclusive Zoo Tycoon , published by Microsoft Studios , and launched backers alpha for Elite: Dangerous in December. In 2015

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6552-412: The programming language . The development tools are created with C# / WPF / Forms and C++. Lua is used for gameplay features. It supports many platforms such as Microsoft Windows , Xbox One , PlayStation 4 , iOS and Android devices. It supports cross-platform by allowing code and resources on PC to be compiled and run on other platforms. The game code and resources are isolated from the hardware by

6678-488: The video game industry . He told the Los Angeles Times : "Someone who was part of the co-creation of that world and those characters isn't getting a credit or a nickel for the work they put into it. Maybe we need unions in the video game industry to be able to protect creators." Elite (video game) Elite is a space trading video game . It was written and developed by David Braben and Ian Bell and

6804-526: The 1980s" by Next Generation in 2008. In 1996, GamesMaster ranked Elite 11th on their "Top 100 Games of All Time." The game was retrospectively awarded 10/10 by the multi-format magazine Edge —together with only 2 other games — and is being exhibited at such places as the London Science Museum in the " Game On " exhibition organised and toured by the Barbican Art Gallery . Elite

6930-497: The 1984 game Elite by Acornsoft . David Braben owned all rights to Elite assigned to the company in 2008. Between 2005 and 2011, Frontier developed The Outsider , an action-adventure game set in Washington DC that Braben said would advance video game storytelling. The Outsider was cancelled in January 2011 after it was dropped by the publisher, Codemasters , leading to nearly 30 staff layoffs. Frontier had been planning

7056-484: The BBC disks that are compatible with the WD1770 . In addition to this, self-modifying code was used as part of the protection system, created by Rob Northen. This BBC disk-copy-protection was also used by Superior Software in its Exile game. Acornsoft set in motion a large-scale publicity campaign and commissioned a presentational package for the game that was far more elaborate than normal. Acornsoft packaged Elite in

7182-530: The December 1984 issue of Micro Adventurer "A masterpiece such as this is difficult to describe within existing parameters" and "By any standards, Elite is an excellent game, certainly in the Top Three this year. By BBC standards, it is simply the best game that has ever been written for the machine". Crash magazine said about the Spectrum version " Elite is one of the most imaginative ever to be designed to run on

7308-562: The Elite series with which it was involved, a port of Frontier: Elite II and development of Frontier: First Encounters . In 2013, the company was listed on the AIM segment of the London Stock Exchange . It published third-party games under the Frontier Foundry label between 2019 and 2022. Frontier Developments' first game was the 1993 Amiga CD32 port of Frontier: Elite II followed by Frontier: First Encounters , second sequel to

7434-494: The F1 license. In this agreement, Frontier will release four games, starting from F1 Manager 2022 in 2022. On 10 June 2021, Frontier announced Jurassic World Evolution 2 a sequel to their 2018 park builder game would be releasing in late 2021. On 10 Mar 2022, Frontier announced they were cancelling all development of their latest version of Elite Dangerous , Odyssey , on consoles. On 10 August 2022, Frontier announced David Braben

7560-605: The Frontier Foundry label. The game was released in March 2022. Deliver Us Mars , set ten years after the events of Deliver Us The Moon , was announced as part of the Future Games Show Spring Showcase on March 24, 2022. It features a new protagonist who reactivates her companion robot after an apparent ship crash on the planet of Mars. Deliver Us Mars is set to launch on both Epic Games Store and Steam PC storefronts, as well as Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PS5, and PS4 consoles. The Great War: Western Front ,

7686-489: The Galactic Navy. One requires tracking down and destroying a stolen experimental ship; another involves transporting classified information on the Thargoids' home planet, with Thargoid invasion ships doing their best to see that the player does not succeed throughout the duration of the mission involving multiple interplanetary jumps. Rewards differed depending on the mission - from cash and gems to esoteric hardware such as

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7812-446: The IGDA found that people of color were both underrepresented in senior management roles as well as underpaid in comparison to white developers. Further, because video game developers typically draw from personal experiences in building game characters, this diversity gap has led to few characters of racial minority to be featured as main characters within video games. Minority developers have also been harassed from external groups due to

7938-491: The Year" by Computer Gamer . In a 1992 survey of science fiction games, Computer Gaming World gave the title two of five stars, stating that its "popularity was largely a result of being one of the first space games with a 'large' universe to explore". The magazine gave Elite Plus two-plus stars, describing it as "More detailed and complex, it is also more tedious than the original". A 1994 survey of strategic space games set in

8064-511: The ability to save screenshots and print screens to an Epson compatible printer. It also boasted over double the frame rate and a MODE1/MODE2 split screen vs. MODE4/MODE5 giving a full colour game for the first time. https://elite.bbcelite.com/6502sp/ The great commercial success of the BBC Micro version prompted a bidding war for the rights to publish Elite in other formats, which British Telecom 's software arm, Telecomsoft , eventually won. Contemporary versions for home computers based on

8190-521: The acquisition of Activision Blizzard , stated it supported these unionization efforts. After this acquisition, the employees of Bethesda Game Studios , part of Zenimax under Microsoft, unionized under the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in July 2024. Over 500 employees within Blizzard Entertainment 's World of Warcraft division also unionized with CWA that same month. Sweden presents

8316-572: The advent of digital distribution of inexpensive games on game consoles, it is now possible for indie game developers to forge agreements with console manufacturers for broad distribution of their games. Other indie game developers create game software for a number of video-game publishers on several gaming platforms. In recent years this model has been in decline; larger publishers, such as Electronic Arts and Activision, increasingly turn to internal studios (usually former independent developers acquired for their development needs). Video game development

8442-421: The assassin. By trading commodities, he slowly improves the arms and armour of his ship. When he is competent at using the spaceship for combat, but before he feels ready, he makes a trade that is sure to bring his father's killer to him. Alex also learns what the "Dark Wheel" is and what it takes to join its ranks. The first version of the game was released for the BBC Micro, model B on tape and disk and "about

8568-607: The best conversion of the original game, added intelligent opponents who engage in their own private battles and police who take an active interest in protecting the law. As well as such gameplay enhancements, the version also exploited the more modern hardware by using polygon mesh graphics in place of the wire-frames. The game world no longer seems to be centred around the player; freighter fleets with escorts go about their own business, pirate formations patrol lawless systems looking for cargo to loot and mining ships can often be found breaking up asteroids for their mineral content. Unlike

8694-431: The closest equity, making 96 cents for every dollar men made in the same job, while audio professional women had the largest gap, making 68% of what men in the same position made. Increasing the representation of women in the video game industry required breaking a feedback loop of the apparent lack of female representation in the production of video games and in the content of video games. Efforts have been made to provide

8820-519: The code. The last part added was the 3D radar display fitted into the last few unused bytes in their computer. The original BBC version used a novel split screen approach to show four colours (five, including the black background) onscreen simultaneously; the upper two thirds of the screen were displayed in Mode 4 while the lower part was in Mode 5. The subsequent Electron version ran entirely in Mode 4, because

8946-564: The company announced Frontier Expo 2017, a press and community event focusing on Elite: Dangerous , Planet Coaster , and Jurassic World Evolution . The event took place on 7 October 2017 at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park , London, UK. In July 2017, Tencent , a Chinese investment company, bought a 9% share in the company. On 10 March 2020, Frontier announced that they had signed an agreement with Formula One to develop and release several management simulation games based on

9072-669: The company released Screamride , a theme park construction and management simulation game for the Xbox 360 and Xbox One. The company has recently released Planet Coaster , a construction and management simulation video game similar to the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise. The game is the second major self-published franchises from Frontier along with the Elite series. Frontier announced that they will begin self-publishing all their future games, starting with Planet Coaster . Frontier opened

9198-416: The console manufacturer (such as Rare or Naughty Dog ). Whether by purchasing an independent studio or by founding a new team, the acquisition of a first-party developer involves a huge financial investment on the part of the console manufacturer, which is wasted if the developer fails to produce a hit game on time. However, using first-party developers saves the cost of having to make royalty payments on

9324-503: The console. This established the use of licensing fees as a model for third-party development that persists into the present. The licensing fee approach was further enforced by Nintendo when it decided to allow other third-party developers to make games for the Famicom console, setting a 30% licensing fee that covered game cartridge manufacturing costs and development fees. The 30% licensing fee for third-party developers has also persisted to

9450-428: The dastardly Thargoids." Elite has often been regarded as defining the genre for space trading games. Since its release Elite has been credited as being the title that defined the modern space flight simulation genre, a significant source of inspiration for later games in the genre as well as being influential upon gaming as a whole. In interviews, senior producers of CCP Games have cited Elite as one of

9576-444: The developer if the game is not meeting expectations. When each milestone is completed (and accepted), the publisher pays the developer an advance on royalties . Successful developers may maintain several teams working on different games for different publishers. Generally, however, third-party developers tend to be small, close-knit teams. Third-party game development is a volatile sector, since small developers may depend on income from

9702-417: The developers are the publisher's employees, their interests align with those of the publisher; the publisher may spend less effort ensuring that the developer's decisions do not enrich the developer at the publisher's expense. Activision in 1979 became the first third-party video game developer. When four Atari, Inc. programmers left the company following its sale to Warner Communications , partially over

9828-467: The entertainment industry (such as films and television ) require long working hours and dedication from their employees, such as willingness to relocate and/or required to develop games that do not appeal to their personal taste. The creative rewards of work in the entertainment business attracts labor to the industry, creating a competitive labor market that demands a high level of commitment and performance from employees. Industry communities, such as

9954-449: The exalted heights of "Elite". Elite was one of the first home computer games to use wire-frame 3D graphics with hidden-line removal . It added graphics and twitch gameplay aspects to the genre established by the 1974 game Star Trader . Another novelty was the inclusion of The Dark Wheel , a novella by Robert Holdstock which gave players insight into the moral and legal codes to which they might aspire. The Elite series

10080-480: The finished game, although they feared that it was too ambitious for Braben and Bell, and was uncertain about the merits of two developers instead of one on a single game. The programmers were given a £1,000 advance from the company and a royalty rate of 7.5% was agreed. The game took two years to write and started out as a 3D arcade game without the trading element. It was written in machine code using assembly language , giving much care to maximum compactness of

10206-506: The first video game-specific union, Game Workers Unite Australia, was formed in December 2021 under Professionals Australia to become active in 2022. In Canada, in a historic move, video game workers in Edmonton unanimously voted to unionize for the first time in June 2022. In January 2023, after not being credited in The Last of Us HBO adaptation, Bruce Straley called for unionization of

10332-424: The first. Braben and Bell at first intended to have 2 galaxies, but Acornsoft insisted on a smaller universe to hide the galaxies' mathematical origins. However, the use of procedural generation created a few problems. There are a number of poorly located systems that can be reached only by galactic hyperspace— these are more than 7 light years from their nearest neighbour, and, being low-tech, are unable to replace

10458-415: The galactic hyperdrive, thus trapping the traveller. Braben and Bell also checked that none of the system names were profane - removing an entire galaxy after finding a planet named "Arse". The developers did not spend much time playing their creation, and the quality testing was mostly performed by Acornsoft's managing director David Johnson-Davies, who also planned the packaging and marketing campaign at

10584-399: The galaxy, prices of commodities, and name and local details; text strings are chosen numerically from a lookup table and assembled to produce unique descriptions, such as a planet with "carnivorous arts graduates"). This means that no extra memory is needed to store the characteristics of each planet, yet each is unique and has fixed properties. Each galaxy is also procedurally generated from

10710-562: The game and reload. An extremely expensive one-time galactic hyperspace upgrade permits travel between the eight galaxies of the game universe. There is little practical difference between the different galaxies. However, in some versions it is necessary to travel to at least the second galaxy to access the game's missions. The planetary layout of the galaxies is different, and many players have discovered trade routes between closely positioned planets with fortuitous economic combinations. Most versions of Elite included several optional jobs for

10836-427: The game for Beebug Magazine in 1984, David Fell called Elite "the best game ever" for the BBC Micro. In Personal Computer Games Shingo Sugiura said " Elite is vast, complex and very, very absorbing. I've got bulging, red eyeballs from staying up into the early hours but I don't care. I'm going to continue playing until I am ranked Elite ... or at least Competent ... or even Average ... Buy it!". John Cook wrote in

10962-508: The game to be a "Game by Frontier" to be part of its own back catalogue and all the rights to the game have been owned by David Braben. The player initially controls the character "Commander Jameson", though the name can be changed each time the game is saved. The player starts at Lave Station with 100 credits and a lightly armed trading ship, a Cobra Mark III. Most of the ships that the player encounters are similarly named after snakes or other reptiles . Credits can be accumulated through

11088-546: The game's content was derived from the Traveller tabletop role-playing game , including the default commander name Jameson, Braben has denied this several times. When the developers met at Jesus College, Cambridge , Bell was already working on a game for Acornsoft called Freefall . Braben had started writing a game called Fighter , but had not yet completed it. The two projects were sufficiently similar that Braben and Bell compared notes, and after seeing Star Raiders on

11214-404: The gaming industry, while a 2017 IGDA survey found that the female demographic in game development had risen to about 20%. Taking into account that a 2017 ESA survey found 41% of video game players were female, this represented a significant gender gap in game development. The male-dominated industry, most who have grown up playing video games and are part of the video game culture , can create

11340-452: The industry by working long hours. Because crunch time tends to come from a combination of corporate practices as well as peer influence, the term "crunch culture" is often used to discuss video game development settings where crunch time may be seen as the norm rather than the exception. The use of crunch time as a workplace standard gained attention first in 2004, when Erin Hoffman exposed

11466-412: The inspirations for their acclaimed MMORPG , EVE Online . The developers of Jumpgate Evolution , Battlecruiser 3000AD , Infinity: The Quest for Earth , Space Rangers , Hard Truck: Apocalyptic Wars and Flatspace have likewise all credited Elite as a source of inspiration. Similar praise has been bestowed elsewhere in the media over the years. It has been named as one of

11592-419: The label failing to become profitable within one year of release. It was stated that games already released would continue to be supported but no further games would release under the label. Instead future funding that was to be allocated for this purpose would be diverted to producing games internally. Frontier released Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Ruin on November 17, 2023. Realms of Ruin flopped with

11718-431: The lack of respect that the new management gave to programmers, they used their knowledge of how Atari VCS game cartridges were programmed to create their own games for the system, founding Activision in 1979 to sell these. Atari took legal action to try to block the sale of these games, but the companies ultimately settled, with Activision agreeing to pay a portion of their sales as a license fee to Atari for developing for

11844-479: The late 1980s a variant of the commercial BBC Micro Elite release was created by Angus Duggan by disassembling and modifying the 6502 code from the existing with many extra features, originally titled Elite III but now known as Elite A to minimise confusion. It includes many more ship types, more ship types flyable by the player (who begins in the less capable Adder), cargo delivery missions, some extra equipment items and numerous gameplay improvements. Elite A

11970-460: The most influential games in history, and has been credited as being the first truly open-ended open world game and opening the door for future online persistent worlds such as Second Life , World of Warcraft and EVE Online . Elite is one of the most popularly requested games to be remade , with some arguing that it is still the best example of the genre to date, with more recent titles—including its immediate sequel—not rising up to

12096-551: The movement again called out for the industry to unionize. The movement argued that Telltale had not given any warning to its 250 employees let go, having hired additional staff as recently as a week prior, and left them without pensions or health-care options; it was further argued that the studio considered this a closure rather than layoffs, as to get around failure to notify required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 preceding layoffs. The situation

12222-511: The mythical Generation Ships of the original, rare occurrences of other non-pirate entities mentioned in the manual really can be found in the Archimedes version: geometric formations of space beacons; hermits living among the asteroids; abandoned ships towed by police (although Dredgers and Generation Ships are confirmed not to exist in Archimedes Elite ). The Archimedes version of Elite

12348-448: The nature of the video game culture. The industry also is recognized to have an ageism issue, discriminating against the hiring and retention of older developers. A 2016 IGDA survey found only 3% of developers were over 50 years old, while at least two-thirds were between 20 and 34; these numbers show a far lower average age compared to the U.S. national average of about 41.9 that same year. While discrimination by age in hiring practices

12474-529: The news, there have typically been followup discussions towards the potential to form a union. A survey performed by the International Game Developers Association in 2014 found that more than half of the 2,200 developers surveyed favored unionization. A similar survey of over 4,000 game developers run by the Game Developers Conference in early 2019 found that 47% of respondents felt the video game industry should unionize. In 2016, voice actors in

12600-463: The novella is planned for publication in 1985", but no direct sequel was ever written. A second novella, Imprint by Andy Redman, was included with the IBM PC release of Elite Plus , but apart from being set in the same universe it is in no way connected to the original story. Marketing activities included a £50,000 promotional budget from Acornsoft, including television advertising and a launch party at

12726-402: The numbers are around a million units. Elite ' s technical breakthroughs reportedly amazed the BBC Micro's developers, with Sophie Wilson calling it "the game that couldn't have been written". However, many players found gameplay difficult and unfamiliar; the game was so controversial that The Micro User devoted its April 1985 letter column to readers debating it. In his review of

12852-694: The present, being a de facto rate used for most digital storefronts for third-party developers to offer their games on the platform. In recent years, larger publishers have acquired several third-party developers. While these development teams are now technically "in-house", they often continue to operate in an autonomous manner (with their own culture and work practices). For example, Activision acquired Raven (1997); Neversoft (1999), which merged with Infinity Ward in 2014; Z-Axis (2001); Treyarch (2001); Luxoflux (2002); Shaba (2002); Infinity Ward (2003) and Vicarious Visions (2005). All these developers continue operating much as they did before acquisition,

12978-414: The primary differences being exclusivity and financial details. Publishers tend to be more forgiving of their own development teams going over budget (or missing deadlines) than third-party developers. A developer may not be the primary entity creating a piece of software, usually providing an external software tool which helps organize (or use) information for the primary software product. Such tools may be

13104-429: The publisher's wishes generally override those of the developer. Work for hire studios solely execute the publishers vision. The business arrangement between the developer and publisher is governed by a contract, which specifies a list of milestones intended to be delivered over a period of time. By updating its milestones, the publisher verifies that work is progressing quickly enough to meet its deadline and can direct

13230-415: The publishers. While this had some effects on a few games within the industry, it brought to the forefront the question of whether video game developers should unionize. A grassroots movement, Game Workers Unite , was established around 2017 to discuss and debate issues related to unionization of game developers. The group came to the forefront during the March 2018 Game Developers Conference by holding

13356-449: The report in a GameSpot interview, stating that they had previously attempted to resolve the issue without legal action since April 2016. On 6 February 2017 Frontier announced that they had acquired licensing rights from Universal Pictures to be used in their third self-published title, an "enduring movie franchise of global renown". This was later announced to be Jurassic World Evolution , which released on 12 June 2018. On 26 July 2017

13482-404: The same level. In November 1999, on the game's 15th birthday, Ian Bell released many binaries and source code of several versions of the original game on his website. A dispute arose between Bell and David Braben regarding Bell's decision to make available all versions of the original Elite . The dispute has since ended and the various versions became available again on Bell's site. In

13608-546: The ship shapes and the procedural generation code for the galaxies. Elite Plus was released for DOS in 1991. Whereas the original Elite (1987) for the PC used CGA graphics, Elite Plus was upgraded to take advantage of EGA , VGA and MCGA . It was coded entirely in assembly language by Chris Sawyer , who later wrote RollerCoaster Tycoon . The Acorn Archimedes version, ArcElite (1991), written by Warren Burch & Clive Gringras and regarded by Stuff magazine as

13734-447: The ship's sublight engines. Travel between stars is accomplished by hyperspace jumps, and is constrained to those within range of the limited fuel capacity (a maximum of 7 light years ) of the ship's hyperdrive. Sublight travel uses no fuel. Fuel can be replenished after docking with a space station, which requires matching the ship's rotation to that of the station before entering the docking bay —a task that can be avoided by purchasing

13860-692: The success of Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters which was published under the Frontier Foundry label six months prior. On 17 October 2023, Frontier announced it would lay off an ‘unknown number of staff’ in an organisational review. In June 2019, Frontier announced that it would begin publishing games from third-party developers under a new label named Frontier Publishing. At Gamescom 2020, Frontier announced that their publishing label would be renamed to "Frontier Foundry", and that it would publish Struggling from Chasing Rats in 2020, and Lemnis Gate from Ratloop Games in 2021. They would also publish an upcoming project from Haemimont Games . This game

13986-545: The target of sexual harassment. This can be coupled from similar harassment from external groups, such as during the 2014 Gamergate controversy . Major investigations into allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct that went unchecked by management, as well as discrimination by employers, have been brought up against Riot Games , Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard in the late 2010s and early 2020s, alongside smaller studios and individual developers. However, while other entertainment industries have had similar exposure through

14112-604: The time. The original BBC Micro disk version uses a non-standard disk-format for copy protection . This relied on specific OSWORD &7F DFS opcodes in the Intel 8271 floppy-disk controller to directly access the disk, and produce a non-standard sector/track-layout. This causes issues for legitimate customers that use the Western Digital 1770 disk-controller (DFS) ROMs from third-party manufacturers such as Watford Electronics . Acorn subsequently released alternative versions of

14238-484: The toxic nature of the video game culture. This racial diversity issue has similar ties to the gender one, and similar methods to result both have been suggested, such as improving grade school education, developing games that appeal beyond the white, male gamer stereotype, and identifying toxic behavior in both video game workplaces and online communities that perpetuate discrimination against gender and race. In regards to LGBT and other gender or sexual orientations,

14364-487: The use of crunch time at Electronic Arts , a situation known as the "EA Spouses" case. A similar "Rockstar Spouses" case gained further attention in 2010 over working conditions at Rockstar San Diego . Since then, there has generally been negative perception of crunch time from most of the industry as well as from its consumers and other media. Game development had generally been a predominately male workforce. In 1989, according to Variety , women constituted only 3% of

14490-444: The video chips were not 100% compatible and therefore were in black and white only. The Elite universe contains eight galaxies, each with 256 planets to explore. Due to the limited capabilities of 8-bit computers, these worlds are procedurally generated . A single seed number is run through a fixed algorithm the appropriate number of times and creates a sequence of numbers determining each planet's complete composition (position in

14616-504: The video game industry typically shares the same demographics as with the larger population based on a 2005 IGDA survey. Those in the LGBT community do not find workplace issues with their identity, though work to improve the representation of LGBT themes within video games in the same manner as with racial minorities. However, LGBT developers have also come under the same type of harassment from external groups like women and racial minorities due to

14742-678: The video game industry. Whereas some video game employees believe they should follow the craft-based model used by SAG-AFTRA which would unionize based on job function, others feel an industry-wide union, regardless of job position, would be better. Starting in 2021, several smaller game studios in the United States began efforts to unionize. These mostly involved teams doing quality assurance rather than developers. These studios included three QA studios under Blizzard Entertainment : Raven Software , Blizzard Albany , and Proletariat; and Zenimax Media 's QA team. Microsoft , which had previously acquired Zenimax and announced plans to acquire Blizzard via

14868-504: The workforce in video games is estimated to be from contract labor. Similar to other tech industries, video game developers are typically not unionized . This is a result of the industry being driven more by creativity and innovation rather than production, the lack of distinction between management and employees in the white-collar area, and the pace at which the industry moves that makes union actions difficult to plan out. However, when situations related to crunch time become prevalent in

14994-587: The year 2000 and later gave Elite and Elite Plus three stars and two-plus stars, respectively. In 1993, Commodore Force ranked the game at number four on its list of the top 100 Commodore 64 games. It was ranked #14 top game of all time by Next Generation in 1996, #12 on IGN 's 2000 "Top 25 PC Games of All Time" list, the #3 most influential video game ever by the Times Online in 2007, #6 "Greatest Game" by Stuff magazine in 2008, #1 "Top Retro Game" by Retro Gamer in 2004, and #1 "best game of

15120-711: Was argued to be "exploitive", as Telltale had been known to force its employees to frequently work under "crunch time" to deliver its games. By the end of 2018, a United Kingdom trade union, Game Workers Unite UK, an affiliate of the Game Workers Unite movement, had been legally established. Following Activision Blizzard 's financial report for the previous quarter in February 2019, the company said that they would be laying off around 775 employees (about 8% of their workforce) despite having record profits for that quarter. Further calls for unionization came from this news, including

15246-416: Was originally published by Acornsoft for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron computers in September 1984. Elite' s open-ended game model , and revolutionary 3D graphics led to it being ported to virtually every contemporary home computer system and earned it a place as a classic and a genre maker in gaming history. The game's title derives from one of the player's goals of raising their combat rating to

15372-426: Was originally written to be a space trading game called Trojan - however the obvious similarities eventually meant that to avoid a potential lawsuit Trojan had to become an official Elite conversion. ArcElite was one of a number of games released for free by The Icon Bar website in 2006. Some versions feature a new title, " Archangel ", for the player to earn that substitutes the rank of Commander. Archangel

15498-504: Was released publicly in 1997. Like the original game, it can be downloaded free from Ian Bell's web site and played under emulation. Many attempts to develop clones of Elite have been made, but most have been abandoned before completion or have otherwise failed to come to fruition. The open source Oolite is a notable exception. Another successful adaptation is 1337 (meaning "Elite" in Leetspeak ) developed by Jose Maria Enguita for

15624-540: Was revealed to be named Stranded: Alien Dawn which initially released as an Early Access title on Steam in October 2022, with a full release anticipated during 2023. On 13 June 2021, Frontier announced Lemnis Gate would be released on 3 August 2021 with an open beta being scheduled for July 2021. On 3 June 2021 during the Games Workshop Warhammer Skulls event, Frontier announced they would be publishing

15750-573: Was to step down from the position of CEO and take on a newly established executive role of President and Founder. Jonny Watts who has been with the company for 24 years, the last decade of which in the position of Chief Creative Officer was to become the new CEO. The changes were effective immediately. It was also announced that David Gammon would be retiring from his role as Chairman in December 2022 and David Wilton would take on this role at that time. On 2 November 2022, Frontier announced that they had completed an acquisition of Complex Games following on from

15876-505: Was withdrawn from distribution in 2003. In September 2014, on Elite ' s 30th birthday, Ian Bell blessed Elite: The New Kind and re-released it for free on his website. Since then, Elite: The New Kind is also distributed again in version 1.1 by Christian Pinder; a source code mirror is hosted on GitHub . In 2020, Christian Pinder also released an upscaled Windows port of the Acorn Archimedes' Elite. On 20 October 2013,

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