Chris Roberts (game developer)

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Chris Roberts at the launch of Star Citizen at GDC Online 2012 .

Christopher "Chris" Roberts (born May 27, 1968 in Redwood City , California ) is an American game designer , game developer and film producer. He was best known for his space game series Wing Commander .

Life

Roberts grew up in Manchester and, as a young game programmer and designer, implemented his first projects, Match Day , Wiz Adore and Stryker's Run , all of which made it to the top of the sales lists by 1987.

In 1986 Roberts moved back to the USA and worked from then on - initially as a freelancer, from 1990 onwards as director for new technologies - for Origin Systems . During this collaboration, titles such as Times of Lore , a fantasy role-playing game, Bad Blood (1990), a post-apocalyptic role-playing game and Strike Commander (1993), in which the player plays a mercenary in 2011, were created. The background story played an important role in all of these projects, in line with Origin's motto “We create worlds”. Not least because of this, these projects were highly praised by the press.

Roberts' best-known project and the cornerstone of his success, which continues to this day, is Wing Commander, published in 1990, which was also decisive for the breakthrough of the PC as a medium for video games and the improvement of sound cards . "Wing Commander" was the first game to introduce the features that the player could influence the storyline (to a limited extent) with his actions and that important characters could die at any time and not only when the story required it. The game also had cut scenes in which the story was told. In the first two parts these were short animation-style sequences. From part three, these were even films made especially for the games with such well-known actors as Mark Hamill . In the Wing Commander main series, four titles and five add-ons were released up to 1997, as well as six other games and add-ons that were played in the Wing Commander universe. However, Roberts was no longer actively involved in the fifth part of the series.

In 1996 Roberts left Origin and founded his own development studio " Digital Anvil " with his brother Erin Roberts . With this he began the production of a Wing Commander film and various computer games. The film , directed by Roberts personally, was released in 1999 and flopped. In 2000, the space action game StarLancer was released. In 2001, Digital Anvil was bought by its publisher Microsoft and Roberts left the company before his freelancer project , for which he only acted as a consultant, was completed.

Eventually Roberts started a new development studio called Point of No Return Entertainment . With this he planned to produce films, TV series and computer games, but no projects came about. In 2002 he founded Ascendant Pictures and was the producer of several Hollywood feature films, including The Punisher (2004), Lord of War - Dealer of Death (2005) and Lucky Number Slevin (2006), which were financed almost exclusively through a tax loophole in German tax law. Robert's career as a film producer ended when the funds raised by this controversial funding system were exhausted.

In 2011 Roberts founded a new game company, Cloud Imperium Games , with which he is working on a new space simulation in the style of the Wing Commander series called Star Citizen . Roberts was able to collect almost 260 million US dollars in donations for the space game development, the majority of which was via crowdfunding on his project website, the rest was via Kickstarter.com . It will be marketed in online direct sales without a publisher , according to Roberts .

Games

In development :

Movies

Awards

In 2009 he was named one of the 100 most important game developers of all time by the US online game magazine IGN .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Volker Weitz: Privateer . (Article scan) In: Power Play . No. 01/1993, January 1993, pp. 8-10.
  2. ↑ With Ascendant Pictures (Sorted by Popularity Ascending). In: IMDb. Retrieved July 9, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Matt Perez: Exclusive: The Saga Of 'Star Citizen,' A Video Game That Raised $ 300 Million — But May Never Be Ready To Play. Retrieved July 9, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Steve Peterson: Chris Roberts returns to gaming with ambitious space sim. In: gamesindustry.biz. October 10, 2012, accessed October 10, 2012 .
  5. ^ Stretch Goals - Roberts Space Industries. In: robertsspaceindustries.com. RSI, accessed May 3, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Chris Roberts raises $ 6.3 million for "Star Citizen," Heise News November 20, 2012, accessed November 22, 2012
  7. ↑ 93. Chris Roberts ( English ) In: IGN . News Corp . 2009. Archived from the original on August 8, 2011. Retrieved November 23, 2019.
personal data
SURNAME Roberts, Chris
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Roberts, Christopher (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American game designer
DATE OF BIRTH May 27, 1968
PLACE OF BIRTH Redwood City , California , USA