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Julian Gollop is a British video game designer and producer specialising in strategy games,[2] who has founded and led Mythos Games, Codo Technologies and Snapshot Games. He is known best as the "man who gave birth to the X-COM franchise."[3]
Julian Gollop | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1965 (age 58–59) |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation(s) | Game designer producer |
| Years active | 1982–present |
| Employer(s) | Snapshot Games (founder and CEO) |
| Known for | X-COM |
| Notable work | Chaos: The Battle of Wizards Rebelstar series Laser Squad X-COM: UFO Defense |
| Spouse | Reni (m. 2003)[1] |
| Website | http://snapshotgames.com |
Julian Gollop was born in 1965.[4] He came of age in Harlow, England.[5] When he was a child, his father introduced him to many different types of games, including chess, card games, and board games.[5][6] His family played games regularly, choosing to play games instead of going to see films.[5] When he was about 14 years old, Gollop started playing more complex games like Dungeons & Dragons, SPI board games, and Avalon Hill board games.[5][6] After home computers became a reality while he was in secondary school, Gollop's fascination for complex strategy games helped him recognise how computers could allow him to make and play games he enjoyed.[5][6]
Early career (1982 to 1988)
In 1982, while he was still in secondary school, Gollop started designing and programming computer games.[1][6][7] For £25, Gollop bought his first computer, a ZX81, from a school friend to learn programming.[6] Even though the ZX81 only had one kilobyte of memory and no real graphics processing ability, he was "amazed" at its capabilities.[6] His first published games were Islandia and Time Lords, which he made for the BBC Micro in 1983 with programmer Andy Greene, a school friend.[7][8][9] Gollop subsequently upgraded to a ZX Spectrum and began creating video games like Nebula in BASIC.[6] He recognised that his future involved computers.[6]
When Gollop went on to the London School of Economics to study sociology, he spent more time creating video games such as Chaos: The Battle of Wizards and Rebelstar than he spent studying.[1][6] He created the first Rebelstar by himself as a two-player game and brought it to a publisher that had an office near his college.[6] They wanted it to be a single-player game, something he had not made before,[6] so Gollop created functional path-finding algorithms from scratch, the game got published, and it ended up doing well.[6]
Mythos Games (1988 to 2001)
In 1988, he was joined by his brother, Nick Gollop, in founding Target Games, a video game development company that subsequently changed to Mythos Games.[6][10] Under the Mythos name, the Gollop brothers designed and developed computer games such as Laser Squad, X-COM: UFO Defense and X-COM: Apocalypse.[2][10][11] Up to this time, Gollop had only made computer games for 8-bit and 16-bit home computers commonly found in Europe.[6] It was with X-COM: UFO Defense that he first beginning making video games directly for the MS-DOS and later Microsoft Windows operating system personal computers that at the time would be sold primarily in the United States.[6] Despite the success of these and other games, Mythos Games was forced to close in 2001 after an essential publisher was acquired by a company that withdrew commitments for The Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge, which Mythos Games was in the process of developing.[6][12][13]
Codo Technologies (2001 to 2006)
After closing Mythos Games, Gollops founded Codo Technologies.[13] They were disheartened by how mainstream publishers treated them at Mythos Games, so they tried a different business model.[13] The inaugural game of Codo Technologies in 2002 was Laser Squad Nemesis, a turn-based tactics game with asynchronous, multiplayer play-by-email features which required a monthly subscription.[13] The Gollop brothers developed only one other game, Rebelstar: Tactical Command, before he moved to Bulgaria with his wife in 2006.[14][15]
Ubisoft Sofia (2006 to 2012)
After moving to Bulgaria, Gollop began working for Ubisoft in Sofia as a game designer.[6] He was promoted quickly to producer, eventually leading the development of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars for the Nintendo 3DS.[6][16] He then became the co-creative director of Assassin's Creed III: Liberation for the PlayStation Vita.[16] Gollop left Ubisoft in 2012 with ideas to remake games from earlier in his career.[14][15][16][17]
Snapshot Games (since 2013)
As of 2017, Gollop works in Sofia as the CEO and chief designer for Snapshot Games, an independent video game developer he co-founded in 2013 with David Kaye.[3][18][19][20] Chaos Reborn, the studio's first game, was released by Snapshot Games in 2015.[21] He then led his company's development of Phoenix Point, which was released in December 2019.[3][22]
IGN included him among the top hundred computer game creators of all time.[2] In the X-COM reboot, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Firaxis Games gives homage to Gollop in the form of a "Gollop Chamber" facility in the game.[23] Jake Solomon, creative lead for this XCOM and its sequel, XCOM 2, credits Gollop for much of his success.[24]
| Title | Year | Developer | Publisher |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time Lords | 1983 | Julian Gollop | Red Shift |
| Islandia | 1983 | Julian Gollop | Red Shift |
| Battlecars | 1984 | SLUG Julian Gollop | Games Workshop |
| Nebula | 1984 | Julian Gollop | Red Shift |
| Rebelstar Raiders | 1984 | Julian Gollop | Red Shift |
| Chaos: The Battle of Wizards | 1985 | Julian Gollop | Games Workshop |
| Rebelstar | 1986 | Julian Gollop | Firebird |
| Rebelstar II | 1988 | Julian Gollop | Silverbird Software |
| Laser Squad | 1988 | Mythos Games | Blade Software MicroLeague |
| Lords of Chaos | 1990 | Mythos Games | Blade Software |
| X-COM: UFO Defense | 1994 | Mythos Games | MicroProse Spectrum HoloByte (Japan) |
| X-COM: Apocalypse | 1997 | Mythos Games | MicroProse |
| Magic and Mayhem | 1998 | Mythos Games | (Windows) |
| The Dreamland Chronicles: Freedom Ridge | Cancelled | Mythos Games | — |
| Laser Squad Nemesis | 2002 | Codo Technologies |
|
| Rebelstar: Tactical Command | 2005 | Codo Technologies | Namco |
| Rebelstar 2: The Meklon Conspiracy | Cancelled | Codo Technologies | — |
| Chessmaster Live | 2008 | Ubisoft Sofia | Ubisoft Feral Interactive (Mac OS X) |
| Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars | 2011 | Ubisoft Sofia | Ubisoft |
| Assassin's Creed III: Liberation | 2012 | Ubisoft Sofia | Ubisoft (PlayStation Vita) |
| Chaos Reborn | 2015 | Snapshot Games | Snapshot Games |
| Phoenix Point | 2019 | Snapshot Games | Snapshot Games |
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