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Toys for Bob Inc.
Company typeSubsidiary
IndustryVideo games
Founded
  • 1989; 35 years ago (1989) (partnership)
  • 2002; 22 years ago (2002) (corporation)
Founders
Headquarters
Novato, California
,
U.S.
Key people
  • Paul Yan (Studio Head)
  • Avery Lodato (Studio Head)
Products
Parent
Websitewww.toysforbob.com Edit this at Wikidata

Toys for Bob, Inc. is an American video game developer based in Novato, California. As the creators of the award-winning Star Control and Skylanders series, the studio was founded by Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford in 1989. Their collaboration began as a partnership, before evolving into a division of Crystal Dynamics, a corporation, and eventually a studio owned by Activision. As of 2022, the studio is owned by Microsoft.

Reiche and Ford each attended the University of California, Berkeley in the late 1970s, before entering the video game industry in the early 1980s. Reiche and Ford later met through mutual friends in 1988, when Reiche was seeking a programmer to develop Star Control for Accolade. This led to the creation of their studio in 1989, and the debut of Star Control in 1990. The release was considered a landmark science fiction game, and led to the 1992 sequel Star Control II, which greatly expanded the series' story and scale. Star Control II is celebrated as one of the greatest games of all time, and is featured on several "best of" lists for music, writing, world design, and character design. Through the late 1990s, Toys for Bob developed several games for Crystal Dynamics, including The Horde, Pandemonium!, and The Unholy War. In the early 2000s, the studio transitioned to working on licensed games before parting ways with Crystal Dynamics. Soon after, Activision became their new publisher, and eventually acquired the studio in 2005.

Toys for Bob created the Skylanders series when Activision merged with Vivendi Games and acquired the Spyro franchise. The developers at Toys for Bob had already been experimenting with using physical toys to interact with video games, and believed that this technology would be ideal for Spyro's rich universe of characters. Credited with inventing the toys-to-life genre, the 2011 release of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure was considered a technological and commercial breakthrough. This led to a spinoff series with several successful games, generating a billion dollars in revenue for Activision in the first 15 months, and winning several awards. In 2018, Toys for Bob assisted with the development of the remaster compilations Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy and Spyro Reignited Trilogy.

After the release of Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time in 2020, founders Reiche and Ford left the company to create a new independent studio. The studio took on new leadership under Paul Yan and Avery Lodato, while working on the Call of Duty series. After parent company Activision faced lawsuits over workplace harassment and discrimination, the studio was acquired in 2022 by Microsoft, who purchased Activision and all its properties in a $68.7 billion buyout.

History

Partnership and Star Control success

Toys for Bob began as a partnership between Paul Reiche III and Fred Ford.[1][2] The two founders separately attended the University of California, Berkeley, around the same time. Both entered the video game industry in the early 1980s.[3] Ford started his career creating games for Japanese personal computers, before transitioning to more corporate work.[4] After a few years working at graphics companies in Silicon Valley, Ford realized he missed working in the game industry.[5] Meanwhile, Reiche had started his career working for Dungeons & Dragons publisher TSR, before developing PC games for Free Fall Associates.[6] Reiche's producer at Free Fall took a new job at Accolade, and they helped Reiche secure a three-game agreement with the new publisher.[5] At this point, Reiche needed a programmer-engineer and Ford was seeking a designer-artist, so their mutual friends set up a game night to re-introduce them.[6] The game night was hosted at game designer Greg Johnson's house,[5] and one of the friends who encouraged the get-together was fantasy artist Erol Otus.[7] This meeting led to Reiche and Ford creating a studio together in 1989.[1][2]

Reiche and Ford's first collaboration was Star Control, released for MS-DOS in 1990.[8][9] Originally called Starcon, the game began as an evolution of the concepts that Reiche first created in Archon: The Light and the Dark.[4] 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 its sequel.[6] Upon its release, 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. The staff of Polygon stated that "[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".[4] Their goal of creating a dynamic space adventure was largely inspired by Starflight.[6] Reiche had been friends with Starflight creator Greg Johnson, and had even with lent creative input to Starflight during the game's development in years prior.[6][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 those of the first game.[4] As Reiche and Ford worked on the first version of the game's dialog,[6] they recognized they needed help with the writing and art and decided to enlist the help of close friends.[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.[6] Through mutual friends, they acquired the talents of famed fantasy artist George Barr.[7][15] The project eventually ran over schedule, and the budget from publisher Accolade ran out.[6] During the final months of development, Fred Ford supported the team financially.[16]

Star Control II became regarded as one of the best games of all time by numerous publications since its release.[a] It is also ranked among the best games in several specific areas, including: writing,[28][29] world design,[30][31][32] character design,[33][34] and music.[35][36][37] The game was an influence on the open-ended gameplay of Tim Cain's Fallout,[38][39] the world design of Mass Effect,[40] and the story events of Stellaris.[41] After finishing a Star Control II port to the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer (with additional voice acting and game improvements),[42] Accolade offered Ford and Reiche the same budget to produce a third game, which they turned down to pursue other projects.[4] As the pair had retained the rights to their characters and stories from the first two games,[16] they licensed their content to Accolade so that the publisher could produce Star Control 3 without their involvement.[43]

Growth under Crystal Dynamics

The studio pitched their next game to Sega, but their contacts at the company had already left for Crystal Dynamics, which led Toys for Bob to secure a publishing agreement with them instead.[5] Around this time, Toys for Bob was operating with Paul Reiche, Fred Ford, and his brother Ken Ford, with additional freelancers hired for key tasks.[44] Whereas the studio's previous games were released as a partnership under their legal names, their subsequent games began to refer to their studio as Toys for Bob.[45][46] They initially wanted a name that would distinguish them from their competitors.[3] The name Toys for Bob was suggested by Reiche's wife Laurie. It was chosen to stimulate curiosity and allude to Reiche and Ford's appreciation for real toys.[47][48]

The studio's first game under Crystal Dynamics was The Horde (1994), a full motion video action and strategy game.[49] The video scenes aimed to take advantage of the Hollywood connections of Crystal Dynamics and the increased storage size of CD-ROM, hiring a cast of professional actors such as Martin Short and Kirk Cameron.[5] The game received awards from Computer Gaming World, including Best Musical Score for Burke Trieschmann's music, as well as Best On Screen Performance for Michael Gregory's role as Kronus Maelor.[50] By 1996, Toys for Bob released Pandemonium!, a 2.5D platform game for consoles.[51] Their team expanded to nearly 30 people to complete the project, with substantial efforts to learn the mechanics of 3D game design.[52] As the company grew, so did the mythology around their name. According to Reiche, since people frequently asked who "Bob" was, he instructed his team to come up with their own Bob, and swear he is the only one, "to confuse people".[4]

In the lead-up to their 1998 game The Unholy War, Crystal Dynamics was acquired by Eidos Interactive.[53] Unholy War combined a fighting game with a strategic meta-game. Once again, Reiche's two-layered game design of Archon provided its inspiration.[54] Reiche and Ford thought the gameplay could be re-purposed to work with a Japanese license such as SD Gundam, and Crystal Dynamics helped them get in touch with Bandai, who promised them an "even bigger license".[4] Bandai ultimately had them produce Majokko Daisakusen: Little Witching Mischiefs based on a Japanese anime from the 1960s,[2] with several characters based on the majokko character archetype.[55] The choice of license came as a surprise to Toys for Bob, and the development process was fraught with translation challenges.[4] Majokko Daisakusen was released exclusively in Japan, and Toys for Bob never learned how well the game performed.[2]

In 2000, their next release was 102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue, another major license that was considered of a higher quality than a standard licensed game.[56] Soon after the release, Crystal Dynamics decided to fire the entire Toys for Bob team, which led Toys for Bob to reform as an independent corporation.[5] After operating as a partnership for more than a decade,[1][2] Reiche and Ford legally incorporated Toys for Bob, with Terry Falls as an additional owner.[57] In 2002, the company publicly announced that it was parting ways with Crystal Dynamics and Eidos Interactive, and would seek a new publisher.[58]

Acquisition by Activision

Soon after rebuilding their studio as an independent company,[5] Reiche and Ford released the source code for the 3DO version of Star Control II as open-source under the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), and enlisted the fan community to port it to modern operating systems.[59] The result was the 2002 open source game The Ur-Quan Masters, released under a new title since the Star Control trademark was owned by Atari having been acquired from Accolade.[60] An intern at Toys for Bob began porting the game to various modern operating systems, and the fan community continued the project with further support and modifications.[61] Reiche and Ford retained the original copyrighted content within the first two Star Control games,[62] while granting the fan-operated project a free, perpetual license to the Star Control II content and the Ur Quan Masters trademark.[63]

Toys for Bob secured Activision as their new publisher, thanks to an introduction from former staff who had founded Shaba Games and been acquired by Activision.[5] The publisher offered Toys for Bob the Disney license for Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure,[3] which combined Activision's game engine from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 with the studio's experience working on Disney properties.[57] The game was released in 2003, and gave the studio more valuable experience creating games for a younger audience.[3]

The growing relationship between the studio and publisher led Activision to acquire Toys for Bob 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.[64][1] Reiche and Ford's enterprise had started as a partnership, before evolving into a division of Crystal Dynamics, a separate corporation, and eventually a studio within Activision.[4] By this time, the company was operating with 27 employees.[65] 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,[2] in part due to the negative reputation created by other licensed games.[66]

Skylanders breakthrough

Paul Reiche III (left) and Fred Ford (middle) reflect back their careers, at GDC 2015.

Activision asked the studio to generate a new idea, and the company felt the pressure to find the right opportunity.[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.[67] 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][68] Coincidentally, Activision merged with Vivendi Games in 2008, and asked Toys for Bob to create a new game around Vivendi's Spyro franchise.[69] 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.[69] The studio also saw this as an opportunity to utilize their passion and experience in creating monsters.[3][70] 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] Activision believed that the technology would be ideal for Nintendo's properties, and asked Toys for Bob to present the concept to Nintendo early in its development cycle. However, Nintendo decided to limit their role to marketing the title for the Wii.[3]

This culminated in the 2011 release of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, which became a breakthrough success for the developer.[71][72] The next year, they followed up with the release of Skylanders: Giants, creating a franchise with a billion dollars in sales just 15 months after the release of the first game.[73] These successes led Gamasutra to list Toys for Bob among their top developers for 2012, stating "we're not just impressed that Toys for Bob successfully pulled Skylanders off -- it sold massively, after all -- we're impressed by how ballsy it was to begin with".[74] The success of Skylanders is credited with creating the toys-to-life game genre, attracting competitors such as Nintendo, Disney, and Lego to the multi-billion dollar market sector.[75][76]

In the years that followed, Toys for Bob created several successful Skylanders video games,[3][77] including Skylanders: Trap Team.[78] Their last game in this series was Skylanders: Imaginators in 2016,[79] when slower sales suggested that toys-to-life may have hit their peak.[80] As the toys-to-life market became saturated with imitators, Activision decided to discontinue the Skylanders series.[81] Still, the Skylanders series became one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time.[3] In late 2018, Toys for Bob donated hundreds of Skylanders toys to the Strong National Museum of Play, which planned to use it as an exhibit to document "one of the most significant game franchises of the last decade".[82][83]

Toys for Bob continued their development for important licenses under Activision. They worked on a re-packaged Spyro Reignited Trilogy with updated sound and visuals,[84] in consultation with developers from the original version.[85] Its 2018 release was considered one of the best video game remakes of all time.[84] After providing support on the development of the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy,[86] the studio also released Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time in 2020.[87] This earned the studio a reputation for leading a revival of properties from the original Sony Playstation, as part of a recent trend.[88]

New leadership under Microsoft

Co-founders Reiche and Ford left Toys for Bob at the end of 2020 to create a new independent studio and began development on a sequel to The Ur-Quan Masters.[89][90] Toys for Bob is now headed by Paul Yan and Avery Lodato,[91][92][93] and continues to operate with an estimated 180 employees.[94] In April 2021, it was announced that Toys for Bob would be working on Call of Duty: Warzone as a support studio alongside Raven Software, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch.[95] This led to the release of Call of Duty: Vanguard in December 2021, with assets integrated into Warzone.[96] Throughout 2021, allegations of workplace harassment surfaced at Activision, and Toys for Bob were among 500 employees calling for the resignation of Activision CEO Bobby Kotick.[97][98] Reiche agreed with the need for a change in leadership at his former parent company.[99]

On January 18, 2022, Microsoft acquired Activision Blizzard for $68.7 billion. Microsoft thus took ownership of Toys for Bob along with Activision's other studios, with promises to strive towards safer and more inclusive working conditions.[100][101][102][103] As the CEO of Microsoft's gaming division, Phil Spencer expressed interest in having Toys for Bob revive older game properties now owned by the conglomerate.[104][105] Kotick also expressed his long-term desire to revive the Skylanders series, believing this was now possible thanks to Microsoft's hardware manufacturing and supply chain.[81][106]

Awards

Games developed

Year Title Platform(s) Ref.
1990 Star Control Amiga, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Sega Genesis [57][120]
1992 Star Control II 3DO, MS-DOS [57][121]
1994 The Horde 3DO, MS-DOS, Sega Saturn [57][121]
1996 Pandemonium! Microsoft Windows, PlayStation, Sega Saturn [57][121]
1998 The Unholy War PlayStation [57][121]
1999 Majokko Daisakusen: Little Witching Mischiefs [57][121]
2000 102 Dalmatians: Puppies to the Rescue Dreamcast, Game Boy Color, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation [57][121]
2003 Disney's Extreme Skate Adventure GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox [57][121]
2005 Madagascar GameCube, Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, Xbox [121]
2006 Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam PlayStation 2, Wii [121]
2008 Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360 [121]
2011 Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure Microsoft Windows, OS X, PlayStation 3, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360 [121]
2012 Skylanders: Giants PlayStation 3, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360 [121]
2014 Skylanders: Trap Team Android, iOS, Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One [121]
2016 Skylanders: Imaginators Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Wii U, Xbox 360, Xbox One [121]
2018 Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy Nintendo Switch [122]
Spyro Reignited Trilogy PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch [121]
2020 Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Microsoft Windows [87]
2021 Call of Duty: Warzone PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows [123]

References

Notes

  1. ^ [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27]

Citations

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