Team 17

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Categories: Computer and video game companies

Team 17 is a video game company, which grew from 17Bit Software, an Amiga PD/Demo user-group in the late 80's. Now based in Ossett, West Yorkshire, United Kingdom. They are best known for developing the Worms series of games (initially developed by Andy Davidson), but they have made many other games, notably SuperFrog and the Alien Breed series. Most of their early releases were on the Amiga home computer system and featured trademark smooth scrolling, and detailed cartoonish pixel art. However, they now develop for Windows PCs and all major video game consoles.

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History

Originally a publishing company called 17-Bit Software, which grew out of the Microbyte retail chain in 1987, they specialised in cataloguing, producing and publishing games for the Public Domain sector of the Amiga Market.

In 1990 they stepped out on their own, developing and publishing Full Contact for the Amiga. Their intention to produce a quality game that was not just ports of games released for the Atari ST and the ZX Spectrum was fulfilled - the game was quality in both gameplay and appearance and was universally praised as one of the best Beat 'Em Ups for the system. The company went on to produce many further titles, almost all of which were regarded as classics by the majority of Videogame Journalists (despite a brief disagreement with Amiga Power). Well known Amiga titles like Alien Breed, Assassin, Project-X and Body Blows were released in the early nineties. Team 17 also published titles in the UK for other developers such as AUDIOS and Eclipse UK.

In 1995, Team 17 entered into an agreement with Ocean Software whereby Ocean would co-publish Team 17's titles worldwide. The first title to be released under this agreement was Alien Breed 3D for the Amiga and Amiga CD32 systems. The second title was Worms, Team 17's biggest success to date, and Team 17's first multiple format release; The game was released in late 1995 and early 1996 for the Amiga, PC MS-DOS, Apple Macintosh, PlayStation, Super Nintendo, Game Boy, Atari Jaguar, Sega Mega Drive/Genesis and Sega Saturn, with a version planned for release on the Virtual Boy, although this was cancelled following the poor release of the console in Japan. The title outsold Fifa and Tomb Raider and despite its simplistic 2D art, became an all-formats #1 hit, winning many awards. Team 17 did not produce all of the ports themselves - in fact they themselves were only responsible for the development of the Amiga, PC and PlayStation, Mac, Jaguar and Saturn versions. All of the other 8/16 bit console ports were produced by East Point Software who, in the past, have produced PC ports of Amiga titles (although the ports are usually considered to be inferior, or broken, compared to the Amiga originals).

Since the release of Worms the franchise has gone on to be very successful, selling over 9 million units worldwide. This success contributed towards the company's decision to move away from the Amiga software market which, by 1997, had long been in a state of decline. Team 17 have since focused on the PC market, releasing titles such as Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy, Phoenix, and Addiction Pinball, although they have also released console exclusive titles such as X2.

The last non-Worms title released by Team 17 was Stunt GP in 2001.

In 2003 Team 17 released Worms 3D for the PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox and Game Cube, the first title in the franchise that brings the game into three dimensions. While critically acclaimed the game left some fans cold, with claims that it did not match the simplicity and playability of the 2D titles. Team 17 have listened to their fans and on 29th July 2005 Worms 4: Mayhem has been released for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox.

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Future developments

The company are in the process of developing several new titles for the Nintendo DS and PSP systems, including new Worms titles (returning to the 2D classic style). They are also developing a new version of the original Lemmings to the PSP for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe. Lemmings was originally developed by DMA Design.

In addition, due to the difficulties getting original titles to market in the current age, Team17 have begun developing titles for other publishers based on non-Team17 IP in addition to their own ideas. These titles will begin to be released from 2005 onwards and will commence with Lemmings.

As of 2005, Team17 were still an independent games studio with around 75 staff members. This makes them one of the longest surviving.

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The Amiga Power Dispute

The company had a long-running feud with Amiga Power, an Amiga gaming magazine. Despite giving high reviews to early titles such as Alien Breed, Team 17 viewed the magazine with disregard - a cheat code was placed into the second Alien Breed title that, if entered, would display a secret message criticising Amiga Power's reviewing policy. Computer players at the easiest difficuly setting in Arcade Pool, F17 Challenge and Kingpin: Arcade Sports Bowling were named after various Amiga Power staff members. In addition to which, Team 17 supposedly made allegations of bribery and corruption in the French Amiga magazine Amiga Concept [1]. No justification has been given for these actions.

In 1995, Amiga Power printed negative reviews of Kingpin and ATR - Kingpin scored 47% and ATR scored 38%. Team 17's response to this was to file a lawsuit demanding that the magazine stop "lying about their games" [2]. Team 17 argued that the writer who had reviewed Kingpin had hardly played it, and that the review for ATR had been reviewed "in a style not affording the gravity demanded by a racing game".

The result of the legal battle, if any, had not been disclosed; however, Team 17 added their name to the list of companies who no longer sent review copies of their titles to the magazine, resulting in Amiga Power's writers having to purchase the retail copies upon release. Most titles reviewed after Kingpin received generous scores. Worms scored a mere 60%. The average mark of a Team 17 game reviewed in Amiga Power was 73%.

Following these events, Team 17 required that other Amiga magazines within Future Publishing (such as Amiga Format) sign declarations stating that they would not, under any circumstances, share their review copies with any Amiga Power staff. Former writers of Amiga Power have stated (on their website AP2, a follow-up of sorts to the magazine) that subsequent editors of the magazine made attempts to re-open the lines of communication with Team 17, which one Editor had proven to be almost successful with until Team 17's Creative Director, Martyn Brown, put his foot down. The feud continued after AP had been retired, spilling over onto Amiga Power's Usenet group.

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Trivia

  • Team 17 Staff are occasionally referred to by fans of the company as Teamsters.
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External links

fr:Team17 fi:Team 17