Crytek UK
Overview
After leaving developer
Rare in February 1999, former
GoldenEye 007 and
Perfect Dark team members
Dr. David Doak,
Steve Ellis,
Karl Hilton and
Graeme Norgate began trading as independent development studio
Free Radical Design a mere two months later. It was based in Sandiacre, Nottingham, England.
With a team of only eighteen, Free Radical shipped and delivered the first-person shooter
TimeSplitters to
Eidos for the PS2 launch in October 2000. Despite the time constraints and pressures of building the company and its technology from scratch, they were the only European studio to hit the launch date without any delays.
Over the years Free Radical Design has received numerous awards and nominations including CTW Developer of the Year 2001, the DEVELOP Industry Excellence award for Best Independent Development Studio in 2003, along with five BAFTA nominations for
TimeSplitters 2 in 2004, and two BAFTA nominations for
Second Sight in 2005. Furthermore, they were listed in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 as one of the UK's fastest growing technology companies. Of the four games produced by Free Radical, the average number of units sold per game is well over a million.
The studio only developed first person shooter games. After the
TimeSplitters series and
Second Sight, the studio's final game was
Haze (2008), which received mediocre to negative reviews. On 18th December 2008 the studio was closed, presumably after a deal for a next game for
LucasArts, allegedly
Star Wars: Battlefront III, did not go through. There was also no publisher announced for
TimeSplitters 4 and it was reported that two of the founders, Dave Doak and Steve Ellis, had already left the company earlier that month and established the studio
Pumpkin Beach.
On 31st December 2008 an administrator announced the studio had not been closed entirely (140 employees had been let go), but that about 40 people had been kept on board to work on a new game concept. It paid off, as on 3rd February 2009
Rob Yescombe confirmed the studio had been acquired by
Crytek GmbH. It was consequently renamed
Crytek UK.
Also Known As
- Free Radical Design (from 1999 to Feb 04, 2009)
Trivia
The five developers who started the company (including
David Doak,
Graeme Norgate and
Lee Ray) moved away from
Rare, Ltd. and
Nintendo because they felt
Goldeneye and
Perfect Dark were at their peak.
They wanted to work in an independent studio with the freedom to choose a publisher for each game, hence the word
Free. That seems to have worked out, as
Timesplitters 3 is published by
Electronic Arts and
Second Sight by
Codemasters.
The word
Radical refers to their constant striving for originality. Nothing by the book, always refreshing.
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