Chris Sawyer

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the computer game developer. For the English footballer, see Chris Sawyer (footballer).

Chris Sawyer
Residence	Dunblane, Scotland
Occupation	Computer game developer
Known for	Designing and Programming, RollerCoaster Tycoon, RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 and Transport Tycoon.
Website http://www.chrissawyer.com/

Chris Sawyer is a Scottish computer game developer who is best-known for designing and programming RollerCoaster Tycoon, RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, and Transport Tycoon. He entered the games industry in 1983, writing games in Z80 machine code on the Memotech MTX home computer, and then the Amstrad CPC series home computer. Some of these were published by Ariolasoft, Sepulcri Scelerati and Ziggurat. The former was a rare instance of a game being accepted by a publisher when it was already nearing completion. From 1988 to 1993, Chris Sawyer worked on PC conversions of Amiga games and was involved in many projects, including Virus, Campaign, Birds of Prey, Dino Dini's Goal, and Frontier: Elite II. He also contributed to Elite Plus for the IBM PC.

Sawyer's first management simulation game, Transport Tycoon, was released through Microprose in 1994 and became a classic of the tycoon series of games. A year later he improved and extended the game, giving it the title Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Sawyer immediately sought to create a sequel. However, while still working on the basic game engine, Sawyer developed an interest in roller coasters, and changed the project into what would become RollerCoaster Tycoon, originally called White Knuckle before release. ^[1] After creating RollerCoaster Tycoon, he resumed work on the sequel for Transport Tycoon but again postponed it to create RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. He completed the Transport Tycoon sequel for and released it as Chris Sawyer's Locomotion in 2004. ^[2]

In 2003 a group of third party developers reverse-engineered Transport Tycoon Deluxe and converted it to an open-source project named OpenTTD where many people are still expanding and improving it.

It was rumored that he participated in the creation of the mobile title Train Tycoon. However, this rumor was spread by Redboss, while the actual game was developed and released by LifeWeb Interactive.^{[citation needed]}

Sawyer also served as a consultant for Atari in the development of RollerCoaster Tycoon 3.

In November 2005 Sawyer sued Atari, claiming that they had failed to pay him certain royalties. ^[3]

Since Locomotion, many fans have become concerned that Chris Sawyer has retired from game development. His company website has not been updated in over a year and he has remained silent from participating in any public interviews since his last project. This could be due to Chris Sawyer's primary focus on 2D Isometic game models with most new games being based around 3D engines. Some fans have proposed Chris Sawyer work on new game ideas such as a clone of Mall Tycoon or Zoo Tycoon, considering his huge success with Rollercoaster Tycoon against Bullfrog's earlier and less successful Theme Park.

Sawyer designed and programmed most of his games entirely by himself, using only the services of a freelance artist (Simon Foster) and a musician. He currently lives in Dunblane, Scotland.