Rebellion began, in its own telling, in “their basement flat in Oxford”, where the brothers Jason and Chris Kingsley set up a games company in 1992. Within a year Atari had given the nine-man team two games for its new Jaguar console, one of them a licence the studio would come back to for the next 16 years: Alien Vs Predator. To make the Jaguar game’s creatures, Rebellion built latex models and photographed them, and for one set of animations it “dressed someone up in the actual costume that Hicks wore in the Aliens movie”.
The Kingsleys have run the company ever since. In 2000 they bought the comic they had read since its first issue, 2000 AD, and with it Judge Dredd. Their Sniper Elite series began in 2005, and in 2006 they bought Core Design, the studio behind Tomb Raider. By then Edge was calling Rebellion “the UK’s biggest independent developer”. It is independent still, and it now publishes comics and books and runs a film studio too.
Fast facts
- Founded: 1992 in Oxford by Jason Kingsley and Chris Kingsley; incorporated as Rebellion Developments Limited on 4 December 1992.
- Run by: Jason Kingsley (chief executive and creative director) and Chris Kingsley (chief technical officer).
- First games: Alien Vs Predator (1994) and a driving game, announced as Chequered Flag II, for Atari’s Jaguar console.
- Best known for: Aliens Vs Predator (PC, 1999), the 2000 AD games, Sniper Elite (from 2005) and its Zombie Army spin-offs.
- Comics: owner of 2000 AD and the Judge Dredd Megazine since 2000, and of the old Fleetway and IPC comics archive since 2016.
- Size: more than 60 staff in 2000 and about 200 in 2010.
Latex aliens for the Jaguar
Edge visited Rebellion in January 1994. After seeing Atari’s plans for the Jaguar at a conference about a year earlier, “the nine man outfit was commissioned for two games – a polygon-based driving game, Chequered Flag II, and a firstperson perspective adventure/shoot ’em up based on the Aliens vs Predator licence.” Jason Kingsley, as creative director, was full of praise for the hardware: “It’s superb, and so much a step up from previous consoles.” Instead of drawing the graphics, the team built “small panels to make up the walls, floor and ceilings” and “latex models for many of the sprites”, then photographed and digitised them. “Funnily enough,” he added, “we thought the process would take longer than drawing everything, but it actually worked out quicker.”
Alien Vs Predator came out in October 1994, and Atari needed it: Edge wrote that the company was “counting on the game to boost hardware sales this Christmas”. The player chose to be a Colonial Marine, an Alien or a Predator, each with its own mission. Edge was unimpressed. It gave the game four out of ten, found its levels “completely flat” and without puzzles, and called it “a lumbering, lame and unfocused imitation of Doom”. Jaguar owners saw it differently. The American fanzine Digital Press reported that it had “finally hit the stores and it’s selling out everywhere”, and called it “the best Jaguar game to date”. The Jaguar did not survive, and Rebellion’s future, as a later profile put it, “clearly lay elsewhere”.
Aliens Vs Predator on the PC
Rebellion returned to the licence on the PC. Aliens Vs Predator, published by Fox Interactive at £39.99, came out in spring 1999, with the same three sides as the Jaguar game. PC Zone’s review opened with the line “Everyone in the PC ZONE office could hear Richie Shoemaker scream”, and ended: “If there was an award for the scariest game ever, AvP would win it hands-down.” The first-person horror entry describes how the game worked on its players: the flares, the motion tracker, the flickering lights.
In 2010 Rebellion made a third Aliens Vs Predator, for Sega, on the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Edge gave it five out of ten, and concluded that “terrifying and terrible are not mutually exclusive”.
2000 AD
Asked in 2000 what the company’s name meant, Jason Kingsley said: “The name is an attitude. We’re rebelling against bland copy games made by committees of grey folk who don’t actually play games at all. We want to make great games that are original and different – games that we want to play.”
That year Rebellion bought 2000 AD, the British science-fiction weekly that introduced Judge Dredd, from the publisher Egmont, together with the Judge Dredd Megazine. Jason Kingsley called the comic “not only a goldmine of intellectual properties” but “a hugely enjoyable read”. A Rebellion feature that September explained the attraction: “We get to play with over 700 fully fleshed-out characters, complete with worlds, stories, cool protagonists, and amazing visual designs,” he said, with Dredd “high up on the list”.
The comic gave Rebellion its own characters to make games about. Its series of 2000 AD games, as Edge described it, was “kicked off by the valiant but flawed Dredd Vs Death”. Rogue Trooper, published by Eidos in 2006 for the PC, PlayStation 2 and Xbox, told the origin of the comic’s blue-skinned soldier, whose dead comrades live on as chips in his rifle, helmet and backpack. Edge gave it seven out of ten and praised “a powerhouse performance from Rebellion’s Asura engine”, the studio’s own technology.
In 2016 Rebellion bought the archive of Fleetway and the IPC Youth Group from Egmont, including Battle, Action, Tammy and Roy of the Rovers, and began reprinting it as the Treasury of British Comics.
Sniper Elite and Rebellion Derby
Sniper Elite (2005) put the player in Berlin in 1945 as an American sniper trying to keep German atomic plans out of Soviet hands. Previewing it, the German magazine PC Games picked out what made it different from other shooters: body position, wind and even the sniper’s heartbeat affected the aim. Rebellion announced in September 2015, the tenth anniversary, that it had sold more than 10 million copies. Later games added what Wireframe, reviewing Sniper Elite 5 in 2022, called the series’ “iconic X-ray kill cam”: after a good shot the camera cuts to an X-ray view of the bullet’s damage. Zombie Army 4, “Rebellion’s fourth spin-off of the Sniper Elite series”, set a squad of up to four players against “Hitler’s army of the undead”.
In May 2006 Rebellion bought the staff and assets of Core Design from SCi, which had taken over Eidos. Edge reported that the studio would stay “in situ in its offices in Derby, and all staff will be retained”, 65 people in its count, and that the team had already been working with Rebellion’s Asura engine. As Rebellion Derby it finished Free Running and made Rogue Warrior. In March 2010, after a review begun that January, Rebellion closed the Derby studio and cut jobs at its Oxford headquarters.
Owning the past
Rebellion has also bought and revived older games. It made a new Battlezone for PlayStation VR, and Wireframe noted in 2018 that it owned “a wealth of gaming IP it didn’t develop too, from Evil Genius to Ground Control”. In November 2019 it bought the brand and games of the Bitmap Brothers from Mike Montgomery. The year before, it had bought a $100 million (£78 million) site at Didcot to turn into a film and television studio, where it planned a Rogue Trooper film and Mega City One, a television series set in Judge Dredd’s city.
Sources
- Edge issue 4, January 1994, pp. 26–27: “Rebellion Software” (the nine-man team in Oxford; Atari’s commission for Chequered Flag II and Aliens vs Predator; Jason Kingsley as creative director; latex models and the Hicks costume).
- Edge issue 14, November 1994, p. 78: Alien Vs Predator review (Jaguar; Atari; developer Rebellion; £60; October; “counting on the game to boost hardware sales”; four out of ten).
- Digital Press issue 22, November 1994: Alien Vs Predator review (“selling out everywhere”; “the best Jaguar game to date”).
- PC Zone issue 76, May 1999: Aliens Vs Predator review by Richie Shoemaker (£39.99, Fox Interactive, “Out May”; “the scariest game ever”).
- PC Zone issue 93, September 2000, news: Rebellion’s purchase of 2000 AD from Egmont; Jason Kingsley’s statement.
- PC Gamer (UK) issue 88, September 2000: Rebellion supplement (the basement flat in Oxford “just over seven years ago”; more than 60 staff; Alien Vs Predator released in October 1994; the move to the PC; 2000 AD; Jason Kingsley on the name and on the comic’s characters).
- Edge issue 163, June 2006: Rogue Trooper review (PC, PS2, Xbox; Eidos; Rebellion’s 2000 AD games “kicked off by” Dredd Vs Death; the Asura engine; seven out of ten).
- Edge issue 165, August 2006: “Whatever happened to the Lara lads?” (Core Design bought by Rebellion, “the UK’s biggest independent developer”; 65 employees; the Derby offices; the Asura engine).
- PC Games (Germany), June 2005: Sniper Elite preview (“Rebellion/Juli 2005”; Berlin 1945; wind, posture and heartbeat affect aim).
- Edge issue 213, April 2010: studio profile (founded 1992 in Oxford by Jason and Chris Kingsley; about 200 employees; key staff) and Aliens Vs Predator review (Sega; five out of ten).
- Wireframe issue 3, November 2018, p. 14: the Didcot studio, Audiomotion, Rogue Trooper and Judge Dredd adaptations, and Rebellion’s bought-in games.
- Wireframe issue 50, April 2021: Zombie Army 4 (“Rebellion’s fourth spin-off of the Sniper Elite series”).
- Wireframe issue 64, June 2022: Sniper Elite 5 review (the X-ray kill cam).
- Companies House, Rebellion Developments Limited, company 02770940 (web, public record). https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/02770940
- “Rebellion acquires classic British comics archive”, 2000 AD, 25 August 2016 (web, secondary): the Fleetway and IPC Youth Group archive; 2000 AD and the Megazine bought from Egmont in 2000. https://2000ad.com/news/rebellion-acquires-classic-british-comics-archive/
- “Sniper Elite hits 10 million sales!”, Rebellion, 30 September 2015 (web, secondary). https://rebellion.com/sniper-elite-hits-10-million-sales/ Also reported by Gamereactor, 30 September 2015. https://www.gamereactor.eu/sniper-elite-series-celebrates-10-million-units-sold/
- “Rebellion Confirms HQ Layoffs, Derby Studio Closure”, Game Developer, 18 March 2010 (web, secondary). https://www.gamedeveloper.com/game-platforms/rebellion-confirms-hq-layoffs-derby-studio-closure
- “Rebellion acquires the Bitmap Brothers brand and portfolio”, Rebellion, 25 November 2019 (web, secondary). https://rebellion.com/rebellion-acquires-the-bitmap-brothers-brand-and-portfolio/