Out of the swamp: Bullfrog and Molyneux on Economics

Bullfrog was founded in 1987 in Guildford, Surrey, England, by Peter Molyneux and his then business partner Les Edgar.[2] This was not Molyneux's first attempt at game design and production, in 1984 he created The Entrepreneur[3], a text-based simulation game about starting and running a company[1] Molyneux produced and advertising the game entirely by himself, duplicating hundreds of tapes of the game on two Tandy Corporation recorders. He was so convinced the game would sell that he even cut himself a larger letterbox to cope with all of the orders[1] Only 2 orders were ever recieved, one of which he suspects is from his mother. Following this failure to break into the industry alone, Molyneux retreated from game design, and started Taurus Impact Systems with Les Edgar, designing office databases. Commodore International[4] mistook it for TORUS, a more established company that produced networking software, and offered to provide Molyneux with eight free Amiga systems to help in porting "his" networking software[1] Molyneux was aware of the misunderstanding from day one of the offer, but decided to take the risk. Taurus redesigned the database system for the Amiga, and after clearing up the misunderstanding with Commodore, the program was released and became a moderate success.[1]

With the money earned from this, the pair set up Bullfrog with the aim of creating original computer games which brought something challenging to home computers. After 2 years of hard work Bullfrog released Populous[9], regarded by many as the first God game for PC.[6] Populous received incredible success for Bullfrog, spanning a series of games and porting to various formats such as the Nintendo GameBoy[8]. Peter Molyneux has said recently that he would be interested in making a net-generation Populous sequel.[5]



Another huge hit for Bullfrog was Theme Park[10], selling over 3.5 million copies[2], and its descendant Theme Park World[11] (SimTheme Park in the US). A further shot at a business management simulator, and later with Theme Hospital[12], Bullfrog was proving itself in the interactive entertainment industry as a small British company and had begun literally building the God game genre.

Molyneux had always dreamed big. From his ambitious early days of self sustained, vertically integrated game production he had by now formed a moderately successful company, but this was about to change. In 1997 three developers of Bullfrog left to form Mucky Foot Productions[6]. With little success and only three titles ever released, the company was closed in 2003.[6] Meanwhile Molyneux sold Bullfrog to the world’s largest computer games publisher, Electronic Arts[2] and set out to form Lionhead Studios with three like-minded Bullfrog colleges. The first was Mark Webley, who had previously been head of Bullfrog’s highly efficient conversions department before producing, designing and programming Theme Hospital. Two other directors also joined Lionhead, Steve Jackson who had co founded Games Workshop and had a great deal of success with the Fighting Fantasy series of books and Tim Rance, one of the Cities most highly regarded systems analysts.[2] With a highly motivated team Lionhead had experience from multiple areas of the entertainment and media industry. The company has maintained its innovative outlook on what makes a good game from day one, currently supporting a large team of creative individuals working together to create continually highly acclaimed games.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Molyneux#Bullfrog_Productions, Dec 2009
[2] http://www.lionhead.com/History.aspx, Dec 2009
[3] The Entrepreneur, 1984, Peter Molyneux, PC
[4] http://www.commodore-evolution.com/index.html, Dec 2009
[5] http://www.amiga.com, Dec 2009
[6] http://www.jolt.co.uk/news/28071/molyneux-wants-to-do-a-populous-sequel/, Dec 2009
[7] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mucky_Foot_Productions, Dec 2009
[8] http://www.nintendo.com/, Dec 09
[9] Populous, 1989, Bullfrog Electronic Arts, PC
[10] Theme Park, 1994, Bullfrog Electronic Arts, PC
[11] Theme Park World, 1999, Bullfrog/Electronic Arts/Feral Interactive, PC/Mac/Playstation 2
[12] Theme Hospital, 1997, Bullfrog/Electronic Arts, PC/Playstation/Playstation Network