Team17

"Team17 Software" is a video game company, which grew from 17Bit Software, an Amiga PD/Demo user-group in the late 1980s. The company is currently 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.

History

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

In 1990 they stepped out on their own. Adopting the name "Team17" (a combination of the Team surrounding 17Bit, who'd named themselves "Team7n" when developing "Miami Chase" for Codemasters), they developed and published "Full Contact" for the Amiga. Their intention to produce a quality game that was not just ports of games released for the Atari ST - 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. Team17 also published titles in the UK for other developers such as AUDIOS and Eclipse UK. Almost all early titles were products of liasing with freelance developers and there were few in-house developers.

In 1995, Team17 entered into an agreement with Ocean Software whereby Ocean would co-publish Team17'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", Team17's biggest success to date, and Team17'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. Team17 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 (coincidentally, the biggest selling editions). 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 12 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. Team17 have since focused on the PC market, releasing titles such as "", "Phoenix", and "Addiction Pinball", although they have also released console exclusive titles such as "X2".

In 2003 Team17 released "Worms 3D" for the PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox and GameCube, 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. Team17 listened to their fans and on July 29, 2005 "Worms 4: Mayhem" was released for PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox, featuring improved graphics and gameplay.2006 saw the release of ' for the Nintendo DS, and PSP, a brand new PSP port of classic puzzle title "Lemmings" (a game originally developed by DMA Design). Rumours of a new game in the "Army Men" franchise, a series of videogames originally developed by The 3DO Company, sparked when former Team17 musician Bjørn Lynne listed the title on his website in September 2005 on the [http://www.lynnemusic.com/credits.html Credits page of his website] . The rumours were eventually confirmed and ' was published in 2006 by Global Star.

In 2007, Team17 released a version of "Worms" for Xbox Live, which was largely a port of "Worms Open Warfare" with downloadable content and online play. 2007 also saw the released of "Worms Open Warfare 2" on the PSP and DS. They were also shortlisted for the British developer of the year by The Golden Joystick Awards.

The company are currently developing the latest game in the Leisure Suit Larry series, entitled "", expected to come out on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC in 2009.

Future developments

Team17 has begun developing titles for other publishers based on non-Team17 IP in addition to its own ideas. These titles have begun to be released, commencing with "Lemmings" for PSP, PS2 and recently the PS3 digital platform. Studio Head Martyn Brown has also recently announced that the Alien Breed IP will be returning soon in digital format on a next-gen platform. [ [http://news.spong.com/article/16093/Exclusive_All_New_Alien_Breed_Confirmed?cb=335 Exclusive: All New Alien Breed Confirmed] ]

Team17 is still an independent games studio with around 75 staff members. This makes it one of the longest surviving independent developers, now into its 19th year (it turned 18 on Dec 5, 2007).

Amiga Power dispute

The company had a feud with Amiga Power, an Amiga gaming magazine. Amiga Power had a fairness policy of giving a 50% score to an average game (50% being seen as average as it is halfway between 0 and 100), instead of 73% to keep the game producers happy [http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/info/marks.html] ; a practice the magazine saw as inherently wrong. Despite giving high reviews to early titles such as "Alien Breed", Team17 viewed the certain reviewers on 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 difficulty setting in "Arcade Pool", "F17 Challenge" and "" were named after various Amiga Power staff members. In addition to which, a Team17 member (and former employee of Future Publishing, the publisher of the magazine) made allegations of bribery and corruption in the French Amiga magazine Amiga Concept [http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/mags/concept.html] . 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%. Team17's response to this was to file a lawsuit demanding that the magazine stop "lying about their games" [http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/dissent/Team17_lawsuit.html] . Team17 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". Actually, no legal lawsuit was ever filed and there was only an exchange of letters between Team17 and Future Publishing/Amiga Power.

Team17 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 Team17 game reviewed in Amiga Power was 73%.

Following these events, Team17 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 Team17, which one Editor had proven to be almost successful with until Team17'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.

Fandom

As a result of the "Worms" franchise as well as their Amiga titles, Team17 has a modest fanbase. Many of these fans congregate on the company's [http://forum.team17.com/ official forum] .

Some people on the [http://forum.team17.com/ Official Team17 Forum] think that Team17 earn money mainly to spend on beer. In the past there were many long-running jokes about Team17 staff and excessive beer consumption, fuelled in part by a now defunct area on their official company website called the Beer Garden (from around 8-9 years ago), and also by Martyn Brown's Custom Status on the forum which, until 2005, proudly boasted "Beer Guzzler". Brown has recently stated on both the forum and his blog [http://www.spadge.net/] that he has all but cut out beer consumption entirely due to his diagnosis of diabetes earlier in 2006.

In February 2004, a small group of fans launched a Team17 fansite called [http://www.dream17.co.uk/ Dream17] . The company gave Dream17 permission to make their entire Amiga back-catalog of games available as free downloads in both ADF and IPF disk image formats.

In addition, Yorkshire-based band [http://myspace.com/mightyevan Mighty Evan] pay tribute to Team17 by making a song written by Bjorn Lynne from the game song Wormsong titled "The Ballad Of Boggy B".

External links

* [http://www.team17.com/ Official Team17 website]
* [http://www.mobygames.com/company/team17-software-limited "Team17"] profile on MobyGames
* [http://www.lemonamiga.com/?mainurl=interviews/martyn_brown Interview with Team17 co-founder Martyn Brown] regarding the early Amiga years.