Frontier Developments
Elite's legacy continues
David Braben's Frontier Developments carried forward the Elite legacy while building simulation games and theme park management titles.
Frontier Developments represents David Braben’s continuation of the work that began with Elite. From Cambridge, Braben built a studio that specialises in ambitious simulation games, from space trading to theme parks to dinosaur management. The company successfully crowdfunded Elite Dangerous, bringing the legendary franchise into the modern era.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1994 by David Braben in Cambridge, UK.
- Key figure: David Braben, co-creator of original Elite.
- IPO: publicly traded on London Stock Exchange (2013).
- Notable titles: Elite Dangerous, Planet Coaster, Jurassic World Evolution.
- Specialty: large-scale simulation games.
The Elite legacy
Continuing the space trading tradition:
- Frontier: Elite II (1993): Braben’s solo sequel before founding company.
- Frontier: First Encounters (1995): troubled launch, ambitious scope.
- Elite Dangerous (2014): Kickstarter success, modern multiplayer space sim.
What came before the company
The entry above starts at 1994, which leaves out the decade that made the studio possible. Braben’s line runs through this Vault repeatedly and is worth setting down.
Elite (1984) was an Acornsoft title on the BBC Micro, and Acorn User — reviewing the year at the end of 1993 — was still calling it “the greatest Acorn game of all time”. Its Spectrum release came through Firebird, British Telecom’s software label, and took 92% in CRASH (issue 22). One of the most influential British games of the decade reached most of its players via the phone company.
Virus and Zarch followed. Amiga Format, in December 1989, places Braben in a short list of British programmers who defined the filled-vector generation: “David Braben, co-author of the original Elite, wrote Virus; Realtime, authors of 3D Starstrike, wrote Carrier Command; Mike Singleton… wrote Whirligig; Jez San’s company Argonaut did a sequel to Starglider; and Mercenary programmer Paul Woakes…”
That cohort is the point. Braben is usually narrated as a lone prodigy; the period press files him as one of five or six people working the same hard problem at the same time.
The wait for Frontier
Acorn User, December 1993, on what was coming:
David Braben, responsible for Elite, the greatest Acorn game of all time… He’s almost completed Frontier, [the sequel] to Elite. Unfortunately this time it will appear first on other platforms, but expect to see it pop up on Acorn machines some time soon.
The regret in that sentence is the whole Acorn story in miniature: the machine that produced Elite no longer got the sequel first.
Amiga Action, reviewing it in a 1995 compilation, records how the wait had been regarded: Frontier — Elite 2 “could quite rightly be described as the most awaited computer game of all time”.
Simulation expertise
Beyond space:
- Planet Coaster (2016): spiritual successor to RollerCoaster Tycoon.
- Jurassic World Evolution (2018): licensed dinosaur park management.
- Planet Zoo (2019): detailed zoo simulation.