Bullfrog Productions
More info
- Creator
- Peter Molyneux, Les Edgar
- Released
- 1987
- Type
- Game developer
- Owner
- Electronic Arts (from 1995)
The British studio that invented the god game with Populous and then turned management into a genre.
Bullfrog was founded in Guildford in 1987 by Peter Molyneux and Les Edgar. The breakthrough was Populous (1989), in which the player controls no character at all but reshapes the land for their worshippers. The genre got the name god game, and the studio followed up with Syndicate, Magic Carpet, Theme Park and Dungeon Keeper, where you play the villain building the dungeon rather than the hero clearing it out.
Electronic Arts bought the studio in 1995. Molyneux left in 1997 to found Lionhead, and a few years later Bullfrog had been dissolved into EA's UK operation. Guildford nonetheless stayed a game-development cluster, populated by people who once worked there.