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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Giants2008 via FACBot (talk) 00:25, 3 October 2022 (UTC) [1].[reply]

List of Bullfrog Productions games

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List of Bullfrog Productions games (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): PresN 02:58, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

After a long string of animal lists, I'm taking a break to resume a project I last touched in 2019: a series of lists of games from 90s video game developers/publishers (3D Realms/id/Raven/Epic/Firaxis/Blizzard/Relic). There's not much of a theme to these lists beyond "in the right time period for me to have played at least one of their games when I was younger", but they all have their own stories. This one is part one of a duology of the rise and fall of Peter Molyneux, famous for being the creative lead behind a lot of amazing—and amazingly overhyped—video games.

This one is the rise, about the video game studio started, appropriately enough, with the money made by hyping a pack of lies about what his software company could do. They hit it into the big leagues almost immediately with Populous, the biggest seller of 1989 and still one of the best-selling PC games 30+ years later. From there they had a wildly successful 6 years, at which point Molynuex et al sold out to Electronic Arts for, to be fair, an absurd amount of money plus a vice presidentship despite having no real ability to run international businesses. Two years later Molyneux and a lot of the creative staff were gone, and Bullfrog—termed the most innovative and imaginative video game company in the world just prior to being bought—hung on making sequels for another four years before getting closed.

This list has a big section of cancelled games, because of a pair of Molyneux-isms: he announces games way too early, and also hangs on to projects even if they're not working, sometimes for years. So, we have sources and even articles on projects that never became products. If you've heard of Molyneux in this century, it's likely for what he got up to after this company—in this era, though, he was a king, who designed a series of innovative projects developed with firm technological constraints but not financial ones. I've tried to shake off the rust for this list type and follow my prior patterns, so I hope you enjoy it, and thanks for reviewing. --PresN 02:58, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

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  • "and lead the company" => "and led the company"
  • "Bullfrog released a further five games after his departure through 2001" - as this article is about a British subject I presume it is written in British English and over here we don't use the expression "through [date]". Change this to "between his departure and 2001"
  • Where the first note gives multiple genres, there's inconsistency as to whether the second is capitalised, eg we have both "Real-time strategy game, God game" and "Real-time strategy game, god game"
  • That's all I got - great work as ever! -- ChrisTheDude (talk) 15:59, 22 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from Cowlibob (talk) 17:40, 9 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
What a pleasant surprise to see this list here, played so many of their games.
  • I know video game sales can be difficult to find but are there any reputable sources for what was the highest selling game they produced and how much it sold?
  • It's probably Populous, with 4 million (which I've added), but I don't have a source that says it was definitively the highest-seller they had.
  • Did any of their games win any major awards or accolades and could the particular award be highlighted?
  • Though not for lack of trying, the video game industry still doesn't have an equivalent to the Oscars or Grammys, and Bullfrog mostly predates even the moderately successful attempts at such, so it would just be a bunch of e.g. PC Gamer's games of the year lists, which are typically not included in lists like these.
  • On the reverse, were there any notable critical or commercial failures?
  • Lack of data here, but not really as far as I can tell- their last games got weaker scores, and probably sales, but nothing that was notable for being a failure.
  • Are genres for video games normally supported by refs like music songs are?
  • No, due to a combination of being less splintered/subjective and being part of the game's marketing descriptions
  • Any images that could be used for article?
  • Unfortunately not, the consensus has been that for lists like this it should be free images, so I usually go with a company logo, but Bullfrog's is non-free.
  • This may not be relevant, but any need to mention why it closed, I seem to remember there was a perception it was due to EA imposing their corporate culture and crushing the studio's creativity like Westwood Studios. Cowlibob (talk) 20:58, 31 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • That was the perception, but EA never made a statement so I've nothing to source- I think it's likely that it was mostly that EA did what they typically did, which was buy a company, eventually put them in the mental bucket of "franchise X" developers for whatever they did last that sold well ("Theme Park / Dungeon Keeper", in this case), and then keep them doing sequels until sales got low and then close the studio. They didn't fire everyone, after all- they just merged it into EA UK and closed the office, so it was just the idea of Bullfrog being a separate entity that was ended. I've added a bit that it wasn't just Molyneaux that left, and I certainly believe that once they left EA didn't hire/support new great game designers to Bullfrog, but studios end for a lot of reasons and we don't have a good enough source for it other than the general perception that EA buys companies that make money but doesn't know how to keep them running as semi-independent studios for long.
@Cowlibob: responded in-line. --PresN 16:38, 3 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  • Source/image review – The page doesn't have any images, so that part is easy. All of the references are reliable and well-formatted. I will note that the script I've installed that attempts to flag unreliable sources is giving a yellow caution highlighting for GameSpot links, for some reason. This surprises me since GameSpot is one of the more reliable gaming sites. Maybe the script thinks it is GameStop instead? It isn't a concern for this review, but I wanted to pass it along as the video game project might want to inquire as to why that is happening. The link-checker tool is flagging a PlayStation.com link as being dead, but I can't see it in the article anywhere. Please double-check that I didn't miss it in there and repair/replace it if you find it. Giants2008 (Talk) 21:28, 27 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
    @Giants2008: I'm not sure why Gamespot gets flagged- Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Sources has it as reliable. It may be because their game database shouldn't be used directly, which the text there notes. There is a playstation.com link in ref 45, but it's dead and marked as such and archived. --PresN 00:08, 28 September 2022 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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