Chris Taylor (video game designer)

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."[1] In 2019, he revealed he has been working on Kanoogi, a cloud-based gaming platform, and developing his next game, Intergalactic Space Empire.[2]

This article is about the Canadian video game designer. For the American game designer, see Christopher Taylor (game designer).
Chris Taylor
Taylor in 2006
Born
British Columbia, Canada
OccupationVideo game developer
Known forCo-founder of
Gas Powered Games
Notable workTotal Annihilation
Dungeon Siege
Supreme Commander
SpouseKimberly Taylor
Jordan Weisman and Chris Taylor at USC IMD in October 2006.

Career

Chris 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.[3] He left Cavedog in March 1998[4] and later founded Gas Powered Games two months later in May where he designed the action role-playing game Dungeon Siege.[5] 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.[6] 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.[7] 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.[8]

Shortly thereafter in 2013, Gas Powered Games was acquired by Wargaming,[9] 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.[10] On April 24, 2019, Taylor announced the formation of a new cloud-based gaming platform, Kanoogi, and a new real-time strategy game, Intergalactic Space Empire.[2]

Awards

Supreme Commander, released in 2007, has been dubbed "best RTS of E3 2006,"[11] the GameCritics Best Strategy Game Award[12] and achieving high ratings from major game websites and magazines.

Games credited

References
  1. "GameSpy's 30 Most Influential People in Gaming" Archived 2005-02-08 at the Wayback Machine. March 2002. GameSpy.
  2. "Chris Taylor reveals Kanoogi cloud gaming platform and Intergalactic Space Empire RTS". VentureBeat. 2019-04-24. Retrieved 2019-10-15.
  3. Keighley, Geoffrey (2007). "The Total Annihilation: The Story So Far". gamespot.com. Archived from the original on 2007-08-07. Retrieved 2011-01-08.
  4. "Total Annihilation Designer Departs". GameSpot. March 17, 1998. Archived from the original on October 15, 2000. Retrieved October 29, 2022.
  5. "Gas Powered Games Interview - Part 1". PC Gameworld. 2003-09-30. Archived from the original on 2005-03-20. Retrieved 2011-01-08.
  6. Adam Solo. Wargaming Takes Master of Orion, Stardock Gets Star Control. Spacesector.com July 2013. Retrieved 2015-09-06
  7. Grayson, Nathan (2013-01-14). "Chris Taylor On GPG's Prehistoric RTS-RPG, Wildman". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. Retrieved 2013-01-21.
  8. Schreier, Jason. "With Four Days To Go, Chris Taylor Cancels Wildman Kickstarter". Kotaku.
  9. Savage, Phil (22 July 2013). "Total Annihilation franchise bought by Wargaming, the owners of Gas Powered Games". Pc Gamer.
  10. "Gaming veteran Chris Taylor leaves Wargaming to start independent studio". 22 November 2016.
  11. "Supreme Commander Wins Best E3 Strategy Game Award From Industry's Top Game Critics". THQ. Retrieved 2007-03-23.
  12. "2006 Winners". gamecriticsawards.com. Retrieved 2008-01-11.
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