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112-575: Lionhead Studios Limited was a British video game developer founded in July 1997 by Peter Molyneux , Mark Webley , Tim Rance, and Steve Jackson . The company is best known for the Black & White and Fable series. Lionhead started as a breakaway from developer Bullfrog Productions , which was also founded by Molyneux. Lionhead's first game was Black & White , a god game with elements of artificial life and strategy games. Black & White

224-418: A BAFTA award for the best action adventure game. There was also a dispute over Fable III ' s box art. The game was developed and released in 18 months, but fell short of the expectations set by the previous installment. Six months before its release, Lionhead attempted to integrate Kinect into the game, but failed. In June 2009, Molyneux became creative director of Microsoft Studios' European division,

336-593: A database , Voice over IP , or add-in interface software; this is also known as middleware . Examples of this include SpeedTree and Havoc . Independents are software developers which are not owned by (or dependent on) a single publisher. Some of these developers self-publish their games, relying on the Internet and word of mouth for publicity. Without the large marketing budgets of mainstream publishers, their products may receive less recognition than those of larger publishers such as Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo. With

448-433: A gap year due to his young age, Hassabis began his computer games career at Bullfrog Productions after entering an Amiga Power "Win-a-job-at-Bullfrog" competition. He began first by level designing on Syndicate , and then at 17 co-designing and lead programming on the 1994 game Theme Park , with the game's designer Peter Molyneux . Theme Park , a simulation video game , sold several million copies and inspired

560-643: A neural Turing machine , reducing the energy used by the cooling systems in Google's data centers by 40%, advancing research on AI safety, and the creation of a partnership with the National Health Service (NHS) of the United Kingdom and Moorfields Eye Hospital to improve medical service and identify the onset of degenerative eye conditions. DeepMind has also been responsible for technical advances in machine learning, having produced

672-718: A visiting scientist jointly at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the lab of Tomaso Poggio , and Harvard University , before earning a Henry Wellcome postdoctoral research fellowship to the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at UCL in 2009 working with Peter Dayan . Working in the field of imagination, memory , and amnesia , he co-authored several influential papers published in Nature , Science , Neuron , and PNAS . His very first academic work, published in PNAS ,

784-459: A bad sign, so other names, including Black Box, Red Rocket, Midnight, and Hurricane were considered but none had unanimous support. The name Red Eye was then suggested, and everyone liked it (the decision needed to be quick as Molyneux was to be interviewed by Edge ). However, for reasons including the name being in use by many other companies, the domains redeye.com and redeye.co.uk being taken and lionhead.co.uk had already been registered by Rance,

896-509: A continuation of the culture and development ethic of Bullfrog", which included the playing of pranks. One such prank was one "that would go down in Lionhead history". It involved a visit from the Mayor of Guildford during the development of Black & White : Healey had inserted a couple of wires into a woollen glove with the other ends put into a floppy drive. Molyneux was forced to explain to

1008-452: A culture of "toxic geek masculinity" within the workplace. In addition, the conditions behind crunch time are far more discriminating towards women as this requires them to commit time exclusively to the company or to more personal activities like raising a family. These factors established conditions within some larger development studios where female developers have found themselves discriminated in workplace hiring and promotion, as well as

1120-403: A desire to leave Electronic Arts and "the sadly ravaged corpse of Bullfrog it had left behind". Intrepid Computer Entertainment was founded by Joe Rider and Matt Chilton, and Black & White Studios was headed by Jonty Barnes, who was a programmer on Dungeon Keeper and Black & White . According to Molyneux, The Movies came about because Lionhead listened to some financial advisers after

1232-571: A first-party company. As a balance to not being able to release their game for other platforms, second-party developers are usually offered higher royalty rates than third-party developers. These studios may have exclusive publishing agreements (or other business relationships) with the platform holder, but maintain independence so that upon completion or termination of their contracts, they are able to continue developing games for other publishers if they choose to. For example, while HAL Laboratory initially began developing games on personal computers like

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1344-410: A fixed period and generally work similar hours as full-time staff members, assisting across all areas of video game development, but as contractors, do not get any benefits such as paid time-off or health care from the employer; they also are typically not credited on games that they work on for this reason. The practice itself is legal and common in other engineering and technology areas, and generally it

1456-403: A game on schedule. The complexity of workflow, reliance on third-party deliverables, and the intangibles of artistic and aesthetic demands in video game creation create difficulty in predicting milestones. The use of crunch time is also seen to be exploitative of the younger male-dominated workforce in video games, who have not had the time to establish a family and who were eager to advance within

1568-406: A game's profits. Current examples of first-party studios include PlayStation Studios for Sony, and Xbox Game Studios for Microsoft Gaming . Second-party developer is a colloquial term often used by gaming enthusiasts and media to describe game studios that take development contracts from platform holders and develop games exclusive to that platform, i.e. a non-owned developer making games for

1680-459: A gay character and some of the leading characters were black. Microsoft, for the most part, left Lionhead alone during the development of Fable II , but did ask them to change the icon of a condom (the game featured a dog who was able to dig them up) to a modern one, despite the game being set in an earlier era. Lionhead and Microsoft conflicted over the game's marketing: Microsoft believed that role-playing games were about dragons and wanted to market

1792-417: A highly ambitious and unusual political simulation game, was delayed due to its huge scope, which involved an AI simulation of the workings of an entire fictional country. The final game was reduced from its original vision and greeted with lukewarm reviews, receiving a Metacritic score of 62/100. Evil Genius , a tongue-in-cheek Bond villain simulator, fared much better with a score of 75/100. In April 2005

1904-510: A massive impact in sales (Molyneux described The Movies as "a disaster" due to lack of playtesting. However, it won a BAFTA award for Simulation in 2006.), and Lionhead soon afterwards encountered financial difficulty. Due to this, on 6 April 2006, Lionhead Studios was acquired by Microsoft. Ubisoft was another contender for the acquisition of Lionhead, but Molyneux believed Microsoft to be "perfect", and said people wanted "the safety and security of being part of something bigger". Microsoft wanted

2016-491: A median global distance test (GDT) score of 87.0 across protein targets in the challenging free-modeling category, much higher than the same 2018 results with a median GDT < 60, and an overall error of less than the width of an atom (<1 Angstrom ), making it competitive with experimental methods, and leading the organisers of CASP to declare the problem essentially solved. Over the next year DeepMind used AlphaFold2 to fold all 200 million proteins known to science, and made

2128-430: A much greater impact than those of other veterans who had already left the company. Lionhead became more professional and organised according to some staff. One said that Molyneux had the power to keep Microsoft at bay, and his departure left the remaining staff vulnerable. Around this time, Microsoft insisted that Lionhead make a games as a service Fable game to reinvigorate interest in the series or face closure. Due to

2240-428: A new theoretical account of the episodic memory system identifying scene construction , the generation and online maintenance of a complex and coherent scene, as a key process underlying both memory recall and imagination. This work received widespread coverage in the mainstream media and was listed in the top 10 scientific breakthroughs of the year by the journal Science . He later generalised these ideas to advance

2352-422: A number of award-winning papers. In particular, the company has made significant advances in deep learning and reinforcement learning , and pioneered the field of deep reinforcement learning which combines these two methods. Hassabis has predicted that artificial intelligence will be "one of the most beneficial technologies of mankind ever" but that significant ethical issues remain. Hassabis has also warned of

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2464-537: A pioneering breakthrough by training an algorithm called a Deep Q-Network (DQN) to play Atari games at a superhuman level by only using the raw pixels on the screen as inputs. DeepMind's early investors included several high-profile tech entrepreneurs. In 2014, Google purchased DeepMind for £400 million. Although most of the company has remained an independent entity based in London, DeepMind Health has since been directly incorporated into Google Health . Since

2576-509: A position he held concurrently with the head of Lionhead. Another Kinect-based project, Milo & Kate was in development but was cancelled. Molyneux blamed the cancellation on Kinect's technology and Microsoft's attitude towards their target market. Its development team moved to Fable: The Journey , another Kinect game that was released in 2012 and was "disastrous". By early 2012, Lionhead were suffering what had been described as "Black Monday". Several Lionhead veterans, dissatisfied with

2688-437: A position in a medium to large video game company. An experienced game-development employee, depending on their expertise and experience, averaged roughly $ 73,000 in 2007. Indie game developers may only earn between $ 10,000 and $ 50,000 a year depending on how financially successful their titles are. In addition to being part of the software industry, game development is also within the entertainment industry; most sectors of

2800-403: A professionally run company. Gone are the days of shooting work experience people with guns". He also said that Lionhead would develop only one game at a time. Early Lionhead employees included Demis Hassabis , Mark Healey (Lionhead's first artist), and Alex Evans . The name Lionhead came from Webley's pet hamster, who had died the week prior to the foundation. The hamster's death was taken as

2912-440: A project called Creation (also called Dimitri ), Black & White NG ( Black & White Next Generation ), Black & White 2 , and BC , despite Molyneux's earlier statement that Lionhead would only work on one at a time. The idea to form these satellite studios came from Jackson during the development of Black & White . Big Blue Box Studios was founded in July 1998 by Ian Lovett and Simon and Dene Carter, because of

3024-649: A roundtable discussion with the International Game Developers Association (IGDA), the professional association for developers. Statements made by the IGDA's current executive director Jen MacLean relating to IGDA's activities had been seen by as anti-union, and Game Workers Unite desired to start a conversation to lay out the need for developers to unionize. In the wake of the sudden near-closure of Telltale Games in September 2018,

3136-502: A service games. As a result, there were many changes within the studio. In early March 2016, Microsoft announced that it had proposed closing Lionhead Studios and that the planned game Fable Legends would be cancelled; Lionhead was closed down almost two months later, on 29 April. A few months after Lionhead's closure, two key people (Webley and Gary Carr , who was Lionhead's creative director) founded Two Point Studios . Peter Molyneux founded Bullfrog Productions in 1987, which

3248-407: A single publisher; one canceled game may devastate a small developer. Because of this, many small development companies are short-lived. A common exit strategy for a successful video game developer is to sell the company to a publisher, becoming an in-house developer. In-house development teams tend to have more freedom in game design and content than third-party developers. One reason is that since

3360-631: A space, and Lionhead won due to Molyneux and Bullfrog's reputation. Lionhead had originally intended to make their first public appearance at the E3 trade show in May 1997. This was cancelled at the last minute because there was not yet any deal with Electronic Arts, and there was the possibility of not being able to discuss Lionhead. The debut was made in September at the European Computer Trade Show instead. According to Jackson, "Everyone"

3472-403: A strong STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) background for women at the secondary education level, but there are issues with tertiary education such as at colleges and universities, where game development programs tend to reflect the male-dominated demographics of the industry, a factor that may lead women with strong STEM backgrounds to choose other career goals. There

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3584-697: A unique case where nearly all parts of its labor force, including white-collar jobs such as video game development, may engage with labor unions under the Employment Protection Act often through collective bargaining agreements. Developer DICE had reached its union agreements in 2004. Paradox Interactive became one of the first major publishers to support unionization efforts in June 2020 with its own agreements to cover its Swedish employees within two labor unions Unionen and SACO . In Australia, video game developers could join other unions, but

3696-538: A whole genre of simulation sandbox games . He earned enough from his gap year to pay his own way through university. Hassabis left Bullfrog to study at Queens' College, Cambridge , where he completed the Computer Science Tripos and graduated in 1997 with a Double First . After graduating from Cambridge, Hassabis worked at Lionhead Studios . Games designer Peter Molyneux, with whom Hassabis had worked at Bullfrog Productions, had recently founded

3808-492: A world-renowned software development house – known in Europe, Japan and America for top-quality games". Word about Lionhead began spreading quickly. Within the first month, companies including Sega , Nintendo , Eidos , GTI, and Lego had arranged meetings. One day, "a major Japanese console manufacturer" had come to present plans for a "next generation console", but by then, Lionhead's first game had already been committed. By

3920-482: Is also a significant gap in racial minorities within the video game industry; a 2019 IGDA survey found only 2% of developers considered themselves to be of African descent and 7% Hispanic, while 81% were Caucasian; in contrast, 2018 estimates from the United States Census estimate the U.S. population to be 13% of African descent and 18% Hispanic. In a 2014 and 2015 survey of job positions and salaries,

4032-527: Is an important problem in biology, as proteins are essential to life, almost every biological function depends on them, and the function of a protein is thought to be related to its structure. Knowing the structure of a protein can be very helpful in drug discovery and disease understanding. In December 2018, DeepMind's tool AlphaFold won the 13th Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction (CASP) by successfully predicting

4144-449: Is expected that this is meant to lead into a full-time position, or otherwise the end of the contract. But more recently, its use in the video game industry has been compared to Microsoft 's past use of " permatemp ", contract workers that were continually renewed and treated for all purposes as employees but received no benefits. While Microsoft has waned from the practice, the video game industry has adapted it more frequently. Around 10% of

4256-533: Is generally illegal, companies often target their oldest workers first during layoffs or other periods of reduction. Older developers with experience may find themselves too qualified for the types of positions that other game development companies seek given the salaries and compensations offered. Some of the larger video game developers and publishers have also engaged contract workers through agencies to help add manpower in game development in part to alleviate crunch time from employees. Contractors are brought on for

4368-494: Is still their primary activity they are generally described as "publishers" rather than "developers". Developers may be private as well. In the video game industry , a first-party developer is part of a company that manufactures a video game console and develops mainly for it. First-party developers may use the name of the company itself (such as Nintendo ), have a specific division name (such as Sony's Polyphony Digital ) or have been an independent studio before being acquired by

4480-610: Is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Google DeepMind , and Isomorphic Labs , and a UK Government AI Adviser. In 2024, Hassabis and John M. Jumper were jointly awarded half of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of AlphaFold , an AI program for protein structure prediction . Hassabis is a Fellow of the Royal Society , and has won many prestigious awards for his research work including

4592-554: Is to "solve intelligence" and then use intelligence "to solve everything else". More concretely, DeepMind aims to combine insights from systems neuroscience with new developments in machine learning and computing hardware to unlock increasingly powerful general-purpose learning algorithms that will work towards the creation of an artificial general intelligence (AGI). The company has focused on training learning algorithms to master games, and in December 2013 it announced that it had made

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4704-474: Is usually conducted in a casual business environment, with t-shirts and sandals as common work attire. Many workers find this type of environment rewarding and pleasant professionally and personally. However, the industry also requires long working hours from its employees (sometimes to an extent seen as unsustainable). Employee burnout is not uncommon. An entry-level programmer can make, on average, over $ 66,000 annually only if they are successful in obtaining

4816-659: The AFL–CIO writing an open letter to video game developers encouraging them to unionize. In January 2020, Game Workers Unite and the Communications Workers of America established a new campaign to push for unionization of video game developers, the Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE), in January 2020. Initial efforts for CODE were aimed to determine what approach to unionization would be best suited for

4928-816: The Breakthrough Prize , the Canada Gairdner International Award , and the Lasker Award . In 2017 he was appointed a CBE and listed in the Time 100 most influential people list. In 2024 he was knighted for services to AI. Hassabis was born to a Greek Cypriot father and a Singaporean mother and grew up in North London . In his early career, he was a video game AI programmer and designer , and an expert board games player. A child prodigy in chess from

5040-561: The Fable series to be an Xbox exclusive, and knew that if Ubisoft had acquired Lionhead, it would have gone to the PlayStation 3 instead, a conclusion that Webley concurred with. Lionhead were concerned with securing the company's future and protecting jobs and spent "months" preparing for the acquisition. Some, such as Andy Robson (Head of Testing), were dissatisfied with the deal. He claimed Lionhead were trying to cheat him out of money he

5152-456: The International Game Developers Association (IGDA), are conducting increasing discussions about the problem; they are concerned that working conditions in the industry cause a significant deterioration in employees' quality of life. Some video game developers and publishers have been accused of the excessive invocation of "crunch time". "Crunch time" is the point at which the team is thought to be failing to achieve milestones needed to launch

5264-516: The MSX , they became one of the earliest second-party developers for Nintendo, developing exclusively for Nintendo's consoles starting with the Famicom, though they would self-publish their mobile games. A third-party developer may also publish games, or work for a video game publisher to develop a title. Both publisher and developer have considerable input in the game's design and content. However,

5376-528: The Me Too movement and have tried to address the symptoms of these problems industry-wide, the video game industry has yet to have its Me Too-moment, even as late as 2021. There also tends to be pay-related discrimination against women in the industry. According to Gamasutra 's Game Developer Salary Survey 2014, women in the United States made 86 cents for every dollar men made. Game designing women had

5488-504: The Screen Actors Guild‐American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) union doing work for video games struck several major publishers, demanding better royalty payments and provisions related to the safety of their vocal performances, when their union's standard contract was up for renewal. The voice actor strike lasted for over 300 days into 2017 before a new deal was made between SAG-AFTRA and

5600-499: The video game industry . He told the Los Angeles Times : "Someone who was part of the co-creation of that world and those characters isn't getting a credit or a nickel for the work they put into it. Maybe we need unions in the video game industry to be able to protect creators." Demis Hassabis Sir Demis Hassabis (born 27 July 1976) is a British artificial intelligence (AI) researcher, and entrepreneur. He

5712-678: The Google acquisition, the company has notched up a number of significant achievements, perhaps the most notable being the creation of AlphaGo , a program that defeated world champion Lee Sedol at the complex game of Go . Go had been considered a holy grail of AI, for its high number of possible board positions and resistance to existing programming techniques. However, AlphaGo beat European champion Fan Hui 5–0 in October 2015 before winning 4–1 against former world champion Lee Sedol in March 2016. Additional DeepMind accomplishments include creating

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5824-446: The IGDA found that people of color were both underrepresented in senior management roles as well as underpaid in comparison to white developers. Further, because video game developers typically draw from personal experiences in building game characters, this diversity gap has led to few characters of racial minority to be featured as main characters within video games. Minority developers have also been harassed from external groups due to

5936-524: The Mayor how the game's on-screen hand was controlled by the glove (which Healey was wearing), when it was actually being controlled by a mouse with Healey's other hand, which were hidden. The Mayor fell for the trick. By June 2002, Lionhead had established satellite companies, including Big Blue Box Studios, Intrepid Computer Entertainment (also called Intrepid Developments), and Black & White Studios. Lionhead and its satellite studios had 107 employees and were developing six games: Fable , The Movies ,

6048-694: The Year award. Before Fable shipped, Lionhead purchased Big Blue Box and Intrepid. The decision to merge Big Blue Box with Lionhead was made to accelerate the completion of the game. Fable was released in 2004 for the Xbox , and won AIAS awards for Outstanding Achievement in Character or Story Development and Outstanding Achievement in Original Musical Composition in 2005. Dimitri was cancelled. In 2003, Gary Carr joined Lionhead. Due to

6160-484: The acquisition of Activision Blizzard , stated it supported these unionization efforts. After this acquisition, the employees of Bethesda Game Studios , part of Zenimax under Microsoft, unionized under the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in July 2024. Over 500 employees within Blizzard Entertainment 's World of Warcraft division also unionized with CWA that same month. Sweden presents

6272-572: The advent of digital distribution of inexpensive games on game consoles, it is now possible for indie game developers to forge agreements with console manufacturers for broad distribution of their games. Other indie game developers create game software for a number of video-game publishers on several gaming platforms. In recent years this model has been in decline; larger publishers, such as Electronic Arts and Activision, increasingly turn to internal studios (usually former independent developers acquired for their development needs). Video game development

6384-659: The age of four, Hassabis reached master standard at the age of 13 with an Elo rating of 2300 and captained many of the England junior chess teams. He represented the University of Cambridge in the Oxford–Cambridge varsity chess matches of 1995, 1996 and 1997, winning a half blue . Between 1988 and 1990, Hassabis was educated at Queen Elizabeth's School, Barnet , a boys' grammar school in North London. He

6496-422: The cancellation of Fable Legends and a proposed closure of Lionhead Studios. The closure came as a shock to some staff, who had suspected Microsoft were concerned but did not think Lionhead would be shut down: it was thought that the worst-case scenario would be that Fable Legends ' s assets would be used for Fable IV . Some staff put the closure down to "a string of bad decisions and mismanagement". The game

6608-431: The closest equity, making 96 cents for every dollar men made in the same job, while audio professional women had the largest gap, making 68% of what men in the same position made. Increasing the representation of women in the video game industry required breaking a feedback loop of the apparent lack of female representation in the production of video games and in the content of video games. Efforts have been made to provide

6720-404: The company already having Lionhead business cards, and the possibility of the name Red Eye having drinking connotations, the name was reverted to Lionhead. By the time the name was reverted, it was too late for Edge to amend their interview, so it was published with the company being referred to as Redeye Studios. In the interview, Molyneux stated that his ambition for the company was to "make it

6832-678: The company in July 1997, co-founding Lionhead shortly after that, along with Mark Webley , Tim Rance, and Steve Jackson (who co-founded Games Workshop and co-authored the Fighting Fantasy series). On his recruitment, Jackson said "It was an offer I couldn't refuse", as he wanted to get back to making games instead of writing about them (Jackson had interviewed Molyneux about Bullfrog and Dungeon Keeper , but for much of it, they discussed German board games instead. This led to them meeting frequently for an event called "Games Night"). Molyneux assured him that his lack of programming knowledge

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6944-609: The company. At Lionhead, Hassabis worked as lead AI programmer on the 2001 god game Black & White . Hassabis left Lionhead in 1998 to found Elixir Studios , a London-based independent games developer, signing publishing deals with Eidos Interactive , Vivendi Universal and Microsoft . In addition to managing the company, Hassabis served as executive designer of the games Republic: The Revolution and Evil Genius . Each received BAFTA Nominations for their interactive music scores, created by James Hannigan . The release of Elixir's first game, Republic: The Revolution ,

7056-416: The console manufacturer (such as Rare or Naughty Dog ). Whether by purchasing an independent studio or by founding a new team, the acquisition of a first-party developer involves a huge financial investment on the part of the console manufacturer, which is wasted if the developer fails to produce a hit game on time. However, using first-party developers saves the cost of having to make royalty payments on

7168-508: The console. This established the use of licensing fees as a model for third-party development that persists into the present. The licensing fee approach was further enforced by Nintendo when it decided to allow other third-party developers to make games for the Famicom console, setting a 30% licensing fee that covered game cartridge manufacturing costs and development fees. The 30% licensing fee for third-party developers has also persisted to

7280-971: The current head of Xbox at Microsoft, admitted that forcing Lionhead to work on Kinect and the impact of that on the quality of their games was at fault. Spencer said "You acquire a studio for what they’re great at now, and your job is to help them accelerate how they do what they do, not them accelerate what you do." Video game developer A developer may specialize in specific game engines or specific video game consoles , or may develop for several systems (including personal computers and mobile devices ). Some focus on porting games from one system to another, or translating games from one language to another. Less commonly, some do software development work in addition to games. Most video game publishers maintain development studios (such as Electronic Arts 's EA Canada , Square Enix 's studios, Activision 's Radical Entertainment , Nintendo EPD and Sony's Polyphony Digital and Naughty Dog ). However, since publishing

7392-444: The developer if the game is not meeting expectations. When each milestone is completed (and accepted), the publisher pays the developer an advance on royalties . Successful developers may maintain several teams working on different games for different publishers. Generally, however, third-party developers tend to be small, close-knit teams. Third-party game development is a volatile sector, since small developers may depend on income from

7504-417: The developers are the publisher's employees, their interests align with those of the publisher; the publisher may spend less effort ensuring that the developer's decisions do not enrich the developer at the publisher's expense. Activision in 1979 became the first third-party video game developer. When four Atari, Inc. programmers left the company following its sale to Warner Communications , partially over

7616-547: The end of July, Lionhead had signed a one-game contract with Electronic Arts. The studio was initially run out of Molyneux's mansion in Elstead , before relocating to the University of Surrey Research Park in 1998. According to Jackson, it was "a mere stone's throw from Bullfrog's old lily pad on the very same estate". For the staff who had come from Bullfrog, it was "a little like coming home". Six companies were competing for

7728-467: The entertainment industry (such as films and television ) require long working hours and dedication from their employees, such as willingness to relocate and/or required to develop games that do not appeal to their personal taste. The creative rewards of work in the entertainment business attracts labor to the industry, creating a competitive labor market that demands a high level of commitment and performance from employees. Industry communities, such as

7840-516: The first video game-specific union, Game Workers Unite Australia, was formed in December 2021 under Professionals Australia to become active in 2022. In Canada, in a historic move, video game workers in Edmonton unanimously voted to unionize for the first time in June 2022. In January 2023, after not being credited in The Last of Us HBO adaptation, Bruce Straley called for unionization of

7952-471: The game as such, despite Lionhead's insistence that the game was "a Monty Python-esque comedy". According to Fable art director John McCormack, the marketing was "shit" and that dragons were Dungeons & Dragons fare and had nothing to do with Fable . Despite the row, most of the Fable II team thought highly of the relationship between Lionhead and Microsoft, and after the game's release, Lionhead won

8064-404: The gaming industry, while a 2017 IGDA survey found that the female demographic in game development had risen to about 20%. Taking into account that a 2017 ESA survey found 41% of video game players were female, this represented a significant gender gap in game development. The male-dominated industry, most who have grown up playing video games and are part of the video game culture , can create

8176-457: The industry by working long hours. Because crunch time tends to come from a combination of corporate practices as well as peer influence, the term "crunch culture" is often used to discuss video game development settings where crunch time may be seen as the norm rather than the exception. The use of crunch time as a workplace standard gained attention first in 2004, when Erin Hoffman exposed

8288-442: The intellectual property and technology rights were sold to various publishers and the studio was closed. Following Elixir Studios, Hassabis returned to academia to obtain his PhD in cognitive neuroscience from University College London (UCL) in 2009 supervised by Eleanor Maguire . He sought to find inspiration in the human brain for new AI algorithms. He continued his neuroscience and artificial intelligence research as

8400-431: The lack of respect that the new management gave to programmers, they used their knowledge of how Atari VCS game cartridges were programmed to create their own games for the system, founding Activision in 1979 to sell these. Atari took legal action to try to block the sale of these games, but the companies ultimately settled, with Activision agreeing to pay a portion of their sales as a license fee to Atari for developing for

8512-470: The most accurate structure for 25 out of 43 proteins. "This is a lighthouse project, our first major investment in terms of people and resources into a fundamental, very important, real-world scientific problem", Hassabis said to The Guardian . In November 2020, DeepMind again announced world-beating results in the CASP14 edition of the competition with AlphaFold 2, a new version of the system. It achieved

8624-559: The movement again called out for the industry to unionize. The movement argued that Telltale had not given any warning to its 250 employees let go, having hired additional staff as recently as a week prior, and left them without pensions or health-care options; it was further argued that the studio considered this a closure rather than layoffs, as to get around failure to notify required by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 preceding layoffs. The situation

8736-448: The nature of the video game culture. The industry also is recognized to have an ageism issue, discriminating against the hiring and retention of older developers. A 2016 IGDA survey found only 3% of developers were over 50 years old, while at least two-thirds were between 20 and 34; these numbers show a far lower average age compared to the U.S. national average of about 41.9 that same year. While discrimination by age in hiring practices

8848-540: The news, there have typically been followup discussions towards the potential to form a union. A survey performed by the International Game Developers Association in 2014 found that more than half of the 2,200 developers surveyed favored unionization. A similar survey of over 4,000 game developers run by the Game Developers Conference in early 2019 found that 47% of respondents felt the video game industry should unionize. In 2016, voice actors in

8960-578: The notion of a 'simulation engine of the mind' whose role it was to imagine events and scenarios to aid with better planning. Hassabis is the CEO and co-founder of DeepMind , a machine learning AI startup, founded in London in 2010 with Shane Legg and Mustafa Suleyman . Hassabis met Legg when both were postdocs at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, and he and Suleyman had been friends through family. Hassabis also recruited his university friend and Elixir partner David Silver . DeepMind's mission

9072-421: The potential benefits (e.g. for health and against climate change) make it worth continuing. He said that there is an urgent need for research on evaluation tests that measure how capable and controllable new AI models are. In 2016, DeepMind turned its artificial intelligence to protein folding , a 50-year grand challenge in science, to predict the 3D structure of a protein from its 1D amino acid sequence. This

9184-407: The potential dangers and risks of AI if misused, and has been a strong advocate of further AI safety research being needed. In 2023, he signed the statement that "Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war". He considers however that a pause on AI progress would be very hard to enforce worldwide, and that

9296-694: The present, being a de facto rate used for most digital storefronts for third-party developers to offer their games on the platform. In recent years, larger publishers have acquired several third-party developers. While these development teams are now technically "in-house", they often continue to operate in an autonomous manner (with their own culture and work practices). For example, Activision acquired Raven (1997); Neversoft (1999), which merged with Infinity Ward in 2014; Z-Axis (2001); Treyarch (2001); Luxoflux (2002); Shaba (2002); Infinity Ward (2003) and Vicarious Visions (2005). All these developers continue operating much as they did before acquisition,

9408-414: The primary differences being exclusivity and financial details. Publishers tend to be more forgiving of their own development teams going over budget (or missing deadlines) than third-party developers. A developer may not be the primary entity creating a piece of software, usually providing an external software tool which helps organize (or use) information for the primary software product. Such tools may be

9520-429: The publisher's wishes generally override those of the developer. Work for hire studios solely execute the publishers vision. The business arrangement between the developer and publisher is governed by a contract, which specifies a list of milestones intended to be delivered over a period of time. By updating its milestones, the publisher verifies that work is progressing quickly enough to meet its deadline and can direct

9632-415: The publishers. While this had some effects on a few games within the industry, it brought to the forefront the question of whether video game developers should unionize. A grassroots movement, Game Workers Unite , was established around 2017 to discuss and debate issues related to unionization of game developers. The group came to the forefront during the March 2018 Game Developers Conference by holding

9744-437: The release of Black & White , who said that the company would die if it did not float on the stock market. The company then went for initial public offering , which Molyneux said was "The most stupid thing that ever happened" because it meant having to expand quickly and develop more games. In the early 2000s, Lionhead was "growing very fast". The company was nominated for the 2002 Golden Joystick Awards British Developer of

9856-443: The stock market crash in the aftermath of 9/11 , Lionhead sought investments from venture capitalists. Deals with various firms were signed in July 2004. This came at a time when the company needed money for the development of five games to be released by different publishers. In 2005, Lionhead released two titles: Black & White 2 and The Movies . Around this time, Lionhead had roughly 220 employees. These titles did not achieve

9968-611: The switch to service based model, the idea of Fable IV was rejected, and experts in monetisation and competitive game design were hired to assist the transition. At some point, John Needham became head of Lionhead. Creative director Carr (who had played major roles in Milo & Kate , The Movies , and Fable: The Journey ) left in September 2015, and a new one, David Eckelberry, was brought in. Lionhead encountered difficulty in this project, Fable Legends , because they had not done anything like it before. On 7 March 2016, Microsoft announced

10080-565: The system and these structures openly and freely available for anyone to use via the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database developed in collaboration with EMBL-EBI . Hassabis is married to an Italian molecular biologist with whom he has two sons. He resides in North London with his family. He is also a lifelong fan of Liverpool FC . Hassabis is the main subject of the documentary called The Thinking Game , which premiered in 2024's Tribeca Festival , from

10192-545: The target of sexual harassment. This can be coupled from similar harassment from external groups, such as during the 2014 Gamergate controversy . Major investigations into allegations of sexual harassment and misconduct that went unchecked by management, as well as discrimination by employers, have been brought up against Riot Games , Ubisoft and Activision Blizzard in the late 2010s and early 2020s, alongside smaller studios and individual developers. However, while other entertainment industries have had similar exposure through

10304-484: The toxic nature of the video game culture. This racial diversity issue has similar ties to the gender one, and similar methods to result both have been suggested, such as improving grade school education, developing games that appeal beyond the white, male gamer stereotype, and identifying toxic behavior in both video game workplaces and online communities that perpetuate discrimination against gender and race. In regards to LGBT and other gender or sexual orientations,

10416-487: The use of crunch time at Electronic Arts , a situation known as the "EA Spouses" case. A similar "Rockstar Spouses" case gained further attention in 2010 over working conditions at Rockstar San Diego . Since then, there has generally been negative perception of crunch time from most of the industry as well as from its consumers and other media. Game development had generally been a predominately male workforce. In 1989, according to Variety , women constituted only 3% of

10528-508: The video game industry typically shares the same demographics as with the larger population based on a 2005 IGDA survey. Those in the LGBT community do not find workplace issues with their identity, though work to improve the representation of LGBT themes within video games in the same manner as with racial minorities. However, LGBT developers have also come under the same type of harassment from external groups like women and racial minorities due to

10640-678: The video game industry. Whereas some video game employees believe they should follow the craft-based model used by SAG-AFTRA which would unionize based on job function, others feel an industry-wide union, regardless of job position, would be better. Starting in 2021, several smaller game studios in the United States began efforts to unionize. These mostly involved teams doing quality assurance rather than developers. These studios included three QA studios under Blizzard Entertainment : Raven Software , Blizzard Albany , and Proletariat; and Zenimax Media 's QA team. Microsoft , which had previously acquired Zenimax and announced plans to acquire Blizzard via

10752-400: The way the company was heading, resigned on the same day. According to McCormack, Molyneux "lost it" and ordered them to leave the premises immediately. Molyneux apologised for this outburst, and soon afterwards, in March, he too left Lionhead and founded 22cans , along with Rance, who had ceased being Lionhead's chief technology officer sometime prior. He was also joined by Paul McLaughlin, who

10864-504: The workforce in video games is estimated to be from contract labor. Similar to other tech industries, video game developers are typically not unionized . This is a result of the industry being driven more by creativity and innovation rather than production, the lack of distinction between management and employees in the white-collar area, and the pace at which the industry moves that makes union actions difficult to plan out. However, when situations related to crunch time become prevalent in

10976-510: Was Lionhead's head of art. Webley then temporarily took over as head of the studio, before being replaced by Scott Henson early the following year. Molyneux said he left Lionhead because he wanted to increase his creativity. He also said that after 12 years (the series began in 2000 by Big Blue Box Studios), everyone was "tired" of the Fable series. Craig Oman, producer of Fable Anniversary , said that Molyneux's departure gave Lionhead an opportunity to reidentify itself. Molyneux's departure had

11088-399: Was a giveaway and he received some of the "trophies". Both current and former Lionhead developers gave the studio a send-off at a pub. On 26 July, Webley and Carr founded Two Point Studios , a studio that some former Lionhead developers later joined. In the 2021 documentary Power On: The Story of Xbox , Microsoft admitted that their handling of Lionhead Studios was a mistake. Phil Spencer ,

11200-451: Was a landmark paper that showed systematically for the first time that patients with damage to their hippocampus , known to cause amnesia , were also unable to imagine themselves in new experiences. The finding established a link between the constructive process of imagination and the reconstructive process of episodic memory recall. Based on this work and a follow-up functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study, Hassabis developed

11312-559: Was acquired by Microsoft Studios in April 2006 due to encountering financial difficulties. Many Lionhead developers left around this time, including co-founder Jackson and several developers who left to found Media Molecule . Molyneux left Lionhead in early 2012 (shortly after the resignation of another group of developers who were dissatisfied with the company) to found 22cans because he wanted to be more creative. After Molyneux's departure, Microsoft had Lionhead switch to developing games as

11424-494: Was an asset rather than a problem. Lionhead is the second Bullfrog break-off group, after Mucky Foot Productions (founded in February 1997). According to Glenn Corpes (who co-founded another: Lost Toys ), Lionhead was Molyneux's "take on what Bullfrog used was". The idea of the company was to develop quality games without growing too large. On the differences between Lionhead and Bullfrog, Molyneux said: "This time round we're

11536-668: Was argued to be "exploitive", as Telltale had been known to force its employees to frequently work under "crunch time" to deliver its games. By the end of 2018, a United Kingdom trade union, Game Workers Unite UK, an affiliate of the Game Workers Unite movement, had been legally established. Following Activision Blizzard 's financial report for the previous quarter in February 2019, the company said that they would be laying off around 775 employees (about 8% of their workforce) despite having record profits for that quarter. Further calls for unionization came from this news, including

11648-542: Was interested in Lionhead: journalists from many major European magazines frequently turned up at Lionhead's suite. By August 1998, after the studio placed a job advertisement in Edge which received over 100 applications, Russell Shaw had been hired as Head of Music. Lionhead's first title was Black & White , which was published by Electronic Arts under terms of Molyneux's severance package from departing Bullfrog. It

11760-428: Was later acquired by Electronic Arts (EA) in 1995. Around 1996, Molyneux had contemplated leaving Bullfrog, as he felt limited in his creative freedom under Electronic Arts. He along with Lionhead's eventual co-founders, Mark Webley , Tim Rance and Steve Jackson , started developing plans for a new studio. In 1997, due to a series of events and from issues arising between Molyneux and Electronic Arts, he ultimately left

11872-454: Was optional. An attempt to save the project was made, under the name of Project Phoenix . This would have involved developing it with a new studio under licence from Microsoft, who supported the idea but it failed due to lack of time, and the fact that many Lionhead employees had found new jobs. On 29 April 2016, Lionhead closed down. One Lionhead developer, Charlton Edwards (the only one remaining who had worked on Black & White ), said there

11984-460: Was owed. Molyneux believed that Microsoft were pleased with the deal, and said that they made their money back due to the release of the "fantastically successful" Fable II (it won a BAFTA award for Action and Adventure in 2009) for the Xbox 360 in 2008. In late 2005, Healey left Lionhead with Evans and a couple of other developers to found Media Molecule . Jackson also left in 2006 when Microsoft took over. The general consensus amongst Lionhead

12096-491: Was published by Electronic Arts in 2001. Lionhead Studios is named after Webley's hamster , which died not long after the naming of the studio, as a result of which the studio was very briefly renamed to Redeye Studios. Black & White was followed up with the release of an expansion pack named Black & White: Creature Isle . Lionhead released Fable , from satellite developer Big Blue Box. In 2005, Lionhead released The Movies and Black & White 2 . Lionhead

12208-564: Was released in 2001 to widespread critical acclaim. It won BAFTA awards for Interactivity and Moving Images in 2001, and AIAS awards for Computer Innovation and Computer Game of the Year the following year. An expansion pack Black & White: Creature Isle , was released the following year. In Lionhead's early years, Jackson wrote columns about the company and the development of Black & White for magazines such as PC Zone and Génération 4 . The articles were also published on Lionhead's website. According to Eurogamer , Lionhead "was

12320-454: Was subsequently home-schooled by his parents, during which time he bought his first computer, a ZX Spectrum 48K funded from chess winnings, and taught himself how to program from books. He wrote its first AI program on a Commodore Amiga based on the reversi board game. He then studied at the comprehensive school Christ's College, Finchley . He completed his A-level exams two years early at 16. Asked by Cambridge University to take

12432-462: Was supposed to be released in summer 2015, after the release of Windows 10 , and some said Lionhead had failed to meet their own targets. To comply with UK employment law, there was a consultation period and the Fable Legends servers were not shut down until mid-April so that customers could get refunds. There was a small "live operations" team that conducted this process, but for others, work

12544-401: Was that the buyout "benefited Lionhead greatly". Microsoft purchased a lease that enabled Lionhead to expand to multiple floors, a canteen, and an office revamp. According to Fable franchise director Ted Timmins, the improvements felt like Lionhead was "a real developer". The pranks were also reduced. During the development of Fable II , Lionhead received death threats because the game featured

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