The Inspirations Behind Jumpgate Evolution

In 1977, a boy named Scott Brown saw a movie that changed his life. A love of space and science fiction was born then that stuck with him as he grew to adulthood. The movie was Star Wars, and while its story thrilled viewers of all ages, its resounding success touched off a wave of popular space action movies, TV shows, toys, and games that entertained a generation. In 1997, Scott Brown founded a company to make computer games, and the first game his company would make was Jumpgate, an online space combat and trading game that released in 2001. Jumpgate drew upon ideas from several well-known space games that had come before, such as Elite, and Wing Commander, but Scott’s original inspiration was Star Wars, and his goal was to bring to Jumpgate’s online audience that same excitement of space fighter combat that so enthralled him as a kid.

Scott’s company, NetDevil, is now creating Jumpgate Evolution. Most of us on the development team share Scott’s love of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, and other science fiction TV shows and movies, or books and games. The excitement and action we enjoy vicariously from these media are a big source of the ideas we’re using to create the experience we want our customers to have when enjoying our game. Our choices of special effects, scenery, or gameplay features all often arise as things we pull from our emotional memories are reprocessed and return to the surface, when we’re trying to think of ways to evoke excitement, tension, or just plain fun gameplay, within the setting of Jumpgate Evolution.