Christopher Sawyer is a Scottish video game designer and programmer. He is best known for creating Transport Tycoon, which has been considered "one of the most important simulation games ever made", and the bestseller RollerCoaster Tycoon series.^[2] He began his career in the early 1980s producing small games for Memotech, and developing DOS ports of many Amiga games. From 1994 to 2004 he produced a series of Tycoon games, which became hallmarks of the simulation genre. After a period away from the games industry in the late 2000s, Sawyer founded the mobile game studio 31X which has handled modern ports of his work.^[3] Wired has described Sawyer as "one of gaming's greatest enigmas" given his legendary contributions to the genre while maintaining little presence online, and rarely agreeing to give interviews.^[4]

Early life

Sawyer was born in Stirling, Scotland,^[3] and had an interest with computers and programming from an early age, writing simple scripts in BASIC on a ZX81 at a local store in Doune. Being unable to afford a BBC Micro, Sawyer purchased a Camputers Lynx with which he could write simple programs in machine code. He graduated with a degree in Computer Science and Microprocessor Systems from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.^[5][6][2]

Career

Memotech & MS-DOS titles (1983–1993)

Sawyer began to write games in Z80 machine code on his Memotech MTX home computer- which possessed a built in assembler- and then later on an Amstrad CPC series home computer. He sent tapes containing his games to Memotech, who arranged first publications of his titles.^[2] Over the period he released a total of 11 Memotech games.^[7][8] He had also a game rejected for publication by Ariolasoft, though the company offered him a job after he had graduated. This did not eventuate as Ariolasoft was downsizing by that time. He faced issues with Megastar failing to pay him royalties on continued sales of his games, and the revenue was only enough to buy him a disk drive and printer.^[2] From 1988 to 1993, Sawyer worked on MS-DOS conversions of Amiga games and was involved in many projects, including Virus, Conqueror, Campaign, Birds of Prey, Dino Dini's Goal and Frontier: Elite II. In the case of the latter, Sawyer worked to improve on the Amiga version by adding texture mapping to the title.^[2]

Tycoon games (1994–2004)

Inspired by Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon, Sawyer began to develop his own title which made use of an isometric gameworld system he had been designing as a personal project.^[2] His management simulation game Transport Tycoon was released by 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. The title sold well, and Sawyer immediately sought to create a sequel.^[9]

While working on the basic game engine for this sequel, Sawyer had used some of the revenue from Transport Tycoon to travel across Europe and the United States and developed an interest in roller coasters,^[9] having ridden over 600 of them by the 2010s, inspiring what would become RollerCoaster Tycoon.^[3][10] Sawyer developed RollerCoaster Tycoon in x86 assembly language by himself, using only the services of freelance graphic designer Simon Foster and composer Allister Brimble.^[5] After creating RollerCoaster Tycoon, he resumed work on the sequel for Transport Tycoon, but again postponed it to create RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. Upon completing that project, he resumed his work on the Transport Tycoon sequel, finally releasing it in 2004 as Chris Sawyer's Locomotion.^[11]

Sawyer also served as a consultant for Atari in the development of RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, which was designed by Frontier Developments. Sawyer understood that further development of the franchise would require 3D graphics but was not interested and left the work to Frontier.^[3]

Departure from industry (2005–2010)

In November 2005, Sawyer sued Atari, claiming that they had failed to pay him certain royalties.^[12] Atari sued Sawyer for damages in 2007,^[13] and the two settled out of court for an undisclosed amount paid to Sawyer in February 2008.^[14] Due to a combination of the legal issues with Atari, and a general detest of the violent nature of video games of the time, Sawyer temporarily stepped away from video games after the release of Locomotion.^[3] In an interview, Sawyer also cited a desire to take a break after working on games for 20 years, to spend more time on his personal interests.^[3] Asked about the period by Wired he replied that he "made a few trips to ride roller coasters around the world."^[15]

31X & Tycoon rereleases (2010–2017)

In 2010, Sawyer founded 31X Ltd. which he initially planned to use as a holding company for the Transport Tycoon intellectual property. However, he saw that there was interest in a mobile version of Transport Tycoon and a space in the market for simulation games like this, and reworked 31X to be a video game developer focused on mobile games.^[16] In addition to Sawyer, several others that worked with him on the Tycoon games became part of 31X, including Jacqui Lyons, who worked with Sawyer for more than 20 years, serving as the company's executive producer.^[16]

31X's first product was Transport Tycoon for iOS and Android, released in 2013, which was assisted with Origin8.^[17][3] Sawyer continued to work with Origin8 to bring the first two RollerCoaster Tycoon games into RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic released for mobile in December 2016. The game later received ports to Microsoft Windows and macOS in September 2017.^[18][19][3]

Second departure (2017- present)

After the completion of Classic, Sawyer "...decided to take a back seat again and devote more time to other aspects of [his] life."^[2] Asked about future projects in 2016 he said "I'd never rule out creating a new original game but I think it's unlikely. I feel like I'm getting on a bit now age-wise and want to take things a bit easier!"^[3] He has also indicated that there is no need for a solo assembly coder such as himself in the modern games industry. Asked about the future in 2020, he replied “I also feel I’ve now created all the games I wanted to create... and working on someone else’s game designs just doesn’t excite me.”

Atari continue to produce titles using the RollerCoaster Tycoon intellectual property under license from Sawyer. He has little involvement with these titles, beyond playing the occasional build.^[20] In 2022, Sawyer extended Atari's rights to the franchise for another decade.^[21] For the franchise's 25th anniversary in 2024, Atari sold a number of art pieces autographed by Sawyer.^[22]

Development style

Asked about his philosophy and style for games design, Sawyer indicated that he had "just kind of worked on ideas which I thought were fun at the time." However, he has identified a Lego-like approach to his work, in which the player deals with small, individual components that go on to be part of larger, more intricate systems. He has also expressed a dislike of modern 3D graphics, describing this as a reason he let Frontier develop RollerCoaster Tycoon 3. "The world of games moved on and I didn't, and I miss the flawed style and clunky simplicity of games from 20 years ago. I admire the amazing graphics and awesome size and realism of many modern games but for some reason can't summon much enthusiasm to play them."^[3]

Personal life

Sawyer values privacy, rarely gives interviews and does not have a social media presence. In this regard Sawyer is unlike many of his 1990s contemporaries such as John Romero and Peter Molyneux, who adopted much more public personas. Asked about his relative lack of a public online presence in 2013 he said that social media "takes time away from what I need to concentrate on". He volunteers with the media team at a local primary school. Sawyer travels the world to visit roller coasters as an enthusiast, and gave his "coaster count" at 657 in 2016.^[23][24]

Works