Chris Taylor (video game designer)
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Chris Taylor is a Canadian video game designer best known for Total Annihilation and the Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander series and co-founding the now-defunct studio Gas Powered Games. In 2002, GameSpy named him the "30th most influential person in gaming."<ref>"GameSpy's 30 Most Influential People in Gaming" Template:Webarchive. March 2002. GameSpy.</ref> In 2019, he revealed he has been working on Kanoogi, a cloud-based gaming platform, and developing his next game, Intergalactic Space Empire.<ref name="kanoogi">Template:Cite web</ref>
Career
Taylor was born in British Columbia and started in the video game industry in the late 1980s at Distinctive Software in Burnaby. His first game was Hardball II released in 1989. Taylor moved to Seattle, Washington in January 1996 when he joined Cavedog Entertainment as the designer and project leader for the real-time strategy video game Total Annihilation and its first expansion, Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency.<ref name=TAStory>Template:Cite web</ref> He left Cavedog in March 1998<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and later founded Gas Powered Games two months later in May where he designed the action role-playing game Dungeon Siege.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Its sequel, Dungeon Siege II, was released in 2005.
In the August 2005 edition of PC Gamer, it was announced that Gas Powered Games was developing Supreme Commander, Taylor's first real-time strategy game since 1997. It is described as the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation, but was not able to be named as such because Atari (formerly Infogrames) owns the rights to the Total Annihilation name. Although Atari has shown no interest in reviving the Total Annihilation franchise, the company nonetheless held on to it until July 2013.<ref>Adam Solo. Wargaming Takes Master of Orion, Stardock Gets Star Control. Spacesector.com July 2013. Retrieved 2015-09-06</ref> He helped create the game's standalone expansion Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.
On January 14, 2013, Taylor funded a new project through Kickstarter, called Wildman.<ref name="wildman">Template:Cite journal</ref> On February 11, 2013, Taylor shut down the kickstarter for Wildman prematurely. Four days before the campaign's end the pledged amount was only $504,120 of the required $1.1 million.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
Shortly thereafter in 2013, Gas Powered Games was acquired by Wargaming,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> where Taylor was reported to be working on an unannounced project. Taylor left Wargaming in November 2016 with a forward looking statement to be part of indie gaming.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
On April 24, 2019, Taylor unveiled Intergalactic Space Empire, a new real-time strategy game, while also announcing Kanoogi, a cloud-based gaming platform. Kanoogi will debut with Intergalactic Space Empire as its first title, with intentions to support a wider range of games in the future.<ref>https://main.kanoogi.com/about</ref>
Awards
Supreme Commander, released in 2007, has been dubbed "best RTS of E3 2006,"<ref name="Gamespot/Awards">Template:Cite web</ref> the GameCritics Best Strategy Game Award<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and achieving high ratings from major game websites and magazines.
Games credited
References
External links
- Chris Taylor entry at MobyGames
- Chris Taylor account at Semicolon