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Fred Ford (programmer)

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Robert Frederick Ford is an American video game programmer. He is the son of mathematician L. R. Ford Jr..

Ford is the co-creator, with Paul Reiche III, of the Star Control universe. Ford did the programming, while Reiche was responsible for the game design and fiction.[1] Ford was also the lead programmer on The Horde and Pandemonium.[2]

Career

Beginnings and Star Control

Ford attended the University of California, Berkeley.[3] In the early 1980s, Ford began his game career while in college, creating games exclusively for the Japanese market.[4] Working for a company called Unison World (later Magicsoft), he worked on his first games for a Japanese monochrome handheld, including a bowling game, a bi-plane flight game, and a tank game.[5] Soon after, he moved onto developing for the NEC PC-6000 series, the MSX, and Fujitsu systems, with titles such as Pillbox, Sea Bomber, and Ground Support, when the company ran out of money.[5]

This led Ford to transition to more corporate work.[6] He worked for graphics companies in Silicon Valley, until he realized he missed working in the game industry.[4] Ford told friends he was seeking a designer-artist to collaborate with, and his friends knew Paul Reiche III was seeking a programmer-engineer.[7] Ford and Reiche had actually attended college together,[3] and their friends arranged to re-introduce them at a game night hosted by game designer Greg Johnson.[8] One of the friends who encouraged the get-together was fantasy artist Erol Otus[9]

Reiche and Ford's first collaboration was Star Control, with Ford focused on programming, and Reiche focused on the game design and fiction.[7] Originally called Starcon, the game began as an evolution of the concepts that Reiche first created in Archon: The Light and the Dark.[6] Archon's strategic elements were adapted for Star Control into a space setting, with one-on-one ship combat inspired by the classic 1962 game Spacewar!.[10] As Ford and Reiche's workflow as a team was developing, the game took on a more limited scope compared to the sequel.[7] Upon its release in 1990, Star Control was voted the "Best Science Fiction Game" by Video Games and Computer Entertainment.[11] Decades later, it is remembered as one of the greatest games of all time. "[A]s a melee or strategic game, it helped define the idea that games can be malleable and dynamic and players can make an experience wholly their own."[12]

Later career

On February 12, 2011, it was revealed that Toys for Bob was working on Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, with Ford acting as CTO and Lead Programmer.

In October 2017 Fred Ford and Paul Reiche III announced they would be working on a direct sequel to Star Control II called Ghosts of the Precursors.[13]

References

  1. ^ Star Control 2 Manual
  2. ^ Fred Ford's profile at MobyGames
  3. ^ a b Campbell, Colin (April 16, 2014). "Toys for Bob and the story behind Skylanders". Polygon. Retrieved March 7, 2016.
  4. ^ a b Sean Dacanay, Marcus Niehaus (July 7, 2020). "Star Control Creators Paul Reiche & Fred Ford: Extended Interview". YouTube. Ars Technica. Archived (Transcript) from the original on July 7, 2020. Retrieved October 21, 2020.
  5. ^ a b "Retro Gamer 067". Issuu. Retrieved October 21, 2020.
  6. ^ a b Matt Barton (April 19, 2016). Honoring the Code: Conversations with Great Game Designers. CRC Press. pp. 203–. ISBN 978-1-4665-6754-2.
  7. ^ a b c Fred Ford & Paul Reiche III (June 30, 2015). "Classic Game Postmortem: Star Control". Game Developers Conference. Retrieved August 6, 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  8. ^ Sean Dacanay, Marcus Niehaus (July 7, 2020). "Star Control Creators Paul Reiche & Fred Ford: Extended Interview". Ars Technica. Archived (Transcript) from the original on July 7, 2020. Retrieved August 6, 2020. Ford: I went to the Silicon Valley and I worked for some graphics companies. I did that for a few years, I was in the wilderness and eventually I said, why am I not doing something I like versus something I think I should be doing? And so the company I worked that, there was a couple of mutual friends, two people who grew up with Paul, they knew I wanted to leave and they knew Paul needed a partner and so they introduced us to each other.
    Reiche: Yeah, we were going to a game night, board game night at Greg Johnson's house, and Greg's one of the designers of "Starflight" and "ToeJam & Earl" and "Orly Draw-Me-A-Story" and a ton of great games. Anyway, he had a regular game night at his house and so we sort of had a blind date there and decided, yeah, let's start working on this game.
  9. ^ Lee Hutchinson (October 26, 2018). "Video: The people who helped make Star Control 2 did a ton of other stuff". Ars Technica. Retrieved August 6, 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  10. ^ Kurt Kalata (September 11, 2018). "Star Control". Hardcore Gaming 101. Retrieved August 6, 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  11. ^ Editors (February 1991). "VG&CE's Best Games of 1990". VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, Issue 25. {{cite news}}: |last= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  12. ^ Polygon Staff (November 29, 2017). "500 Best Games of All Time". Polygon. Retrieved August 6, 2020.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  13. ^ dogarandkazon.squarespace.com Ghosts of the Precursors announcement


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