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]
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.[5]
Ford was working on an unreleased title, when Magicsoft ran out of money.[5] This led Ford to transition to more corporate employment.[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]
The success of their first game led to a more ambitious sequel in Star Control II. Reiche and Ford aimed to go beyond ship combat to develop a "science fiction adventure role-playing game".[6] Their goal of creating a dynamic space adventure was largely inspired by Starflight, created by Greg Johnson.[7] A few years earlier, Reiche had been friends with Johnson. During the game's creation, Reiche was inspired to offer creative input for Johnson's expansive science fiction game.[13] This friendship and mutual admiration led Reiche and Ford to hire Johnson for Star Control II. The duo later credited Johnson as one of the game's most significant contributors.[14] Star Control's story and characters were vastly expanded from the story and characters in the first game.[6] As Reiche and Ford worked on the first version of the game's dialog,[7] they recognized they needed help with the writing and art and were forced to enlist the help of friends and family.[14] In addition to Johnson, they recruited long-time friend Erol Otus, who contributed music, text, art, and illustrations for the game's manual, and (later) voice-acting.[7] Through mutual friends, they acquired the talents of famed fantasy artist George Barr.[15][16] The project eventually ran over schedule, and the budget from publisher Accolade ran out.[7] During the final months of development, Fred Ford supported the team financially.[17]
Star Control II became one of the best games of all time, according to numerous publications in the 1990s,[18] 2000s,[19] and 2010s.[20] It is also ranked among the best games in several specific areas, including: writing,[21] world design,[22] character design,[23] and music.[24] The game also influenced other titles, most notably the open-ended gameplay of Tim Cain's Fallout,[25][26] the world design of Mass Effect,[27] and the story events of Stellaris.[28]
Ford and Reiche began branding themselves as Toys for Bob, with The Horde as the studio's first official title.[29] By this point, Reiche and Ford were doing contract work for game publisher Crystal Dynamics, with their three-person studio recruiting Fred Ford's brother, Ken.[30] The Horde was a fantasy action-strategy hybrid game comparable to Star Control II, and was notable for including performances from actors Kirk Cameron and Michael Gregory.[31]
Toys for Bob secured Activision as their new publisher, thanks to an introduction from former Toys for Bob staff who had founded Shaba Games and been acquired by Activision.[32] The publisher offered Toys for Bob the Disney license for Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure, which led to a 2003 game release.[3] This successful relationship led to Toys for Bob being acquired by Activision in May 2005. The company became a wholly owned subsidiary, and the management team and employees signed long-term contracts under the new corporate structure.[33][34] Working with Activision, Toys for Bob continued to focus on licensed video games, such as Madagascar.[3] However, the market for these types of games began to dry up,[35] in part due to the negative reputation created by other licensed games.[36]
The company searched for new opportunities.[3] One such idea came from Toys for Bob character designer I-Wei Huang, who had been creating toys and robots in his spare time.[37] The company saw the potential to adopt these toys and character designs into a game, with technical engineer Robert Leyland applying his hobby in building electronics.[3][38] Coincidentally, Activision merged with Vivendi Games in 2008, and asked Toys for Bob to create a new game around Vivendi's Spyro franchise.[39] The team saw the potential for toy-game interaction and suggested to Activision that it would be ideal for Spyro's rich universe of characters.[39] Activision CEO Bobby Kotick responded well to the idea, and gave the team an additional year of development to better refine the technology, the manufacturing process, and the gameplay.[3] Ford credits Activision for funding the expensive and risky development, "we could have thought of this idea as independents and never got it made."[39] This culminated in the 2011 release of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, which became a breakthrough success for the developer, their most notable game since Star Control.[40][41]
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.[42]
In 2018, Stardock sued Paul Reiche III along with Fred Ford in Stardock Systems, Inc. v. Reiche, for trademark infringement of the "Star Control" trademark.[43] During the course of the lawsuit, Stardock trademarked numerous alien names from Star Control 1 and 2. Reiche and Ford asserted that Atari only owned the game name, marketing content and the new aliens in Star Control 3,[44] and that the in-game alien names to the first two games were never Atari's to sell.[44] Litigation ended at June 2019 when both sides reached a settlement that involved the parties exchanging honey for mead and the parties agreeing that Stardock has exclusive rights of the Star Control name with a list of alien names from the first two games being for the exclusive use for Reiche and Ford.[45]