Bullfrog Productions

Founded March 1987 · United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Bullfrog Productions was a British developer. It was founded in 1987 by Les Edgar and Peter Molyneux. They were best known for their strategy god games such as Populous. In January 1995, to strengthen its global positioning, Bullfrog Productions merged with long time publishing partner Electronic Arts. In August 1997, Bullfrog co-founder, Peter Molyneux, left to establish a new development team, Lionhead Productions (who, incidentally, has also signed a distribution deal with Electronic Arts). In September 1999, Les Edgar changed his role to consultant for Bullfrog Productions Limited, enabling him to pay more equitable attention to his other business interests. Edgar handed the reins to Bruce McMillan from Electronic Arts' Canadian studio. Following its purchase by EA, Bullfrog continued to work in its original offices in Guildford as an EA studio, and continued to display its own Bullfrog logo on the boxes of its games. In 2000, Electronic Arts merged its EA-UK offices, which had been in Langley near Slough, with the Bullfrog offices, into a new facility in Chertsey. Around August of that year the company decided to drop all further production of Bullfrog-branded products, and the former Bullfrog employees were put onto new projects such as the Harry Potter series. The last Bullfrog-branded game was Sim Theme Park (also known as Theme Park World and Theme Park 2), released in 1999. A few compilations of older games that Bullfrog worked on have been published since, but to all intents and purposes the brand has been dead since the move to Chertsey in 2000. Many Bullfrog developers left to found their own studios and these became Intrepid Computer Entertainment Ltd., Big Blue Box Studios Ltd. and Lionhead Studios. The latter eventually absorbed the first two and became the only studio to carry on the Bullfrog legacy.