Other Distinctive-cum-EA Canada employees also left the company to forge their own studios. Brad Gour, one of Test Drive's designers, co-founded Black Box Games after working on the original Need for Speed at EA. (Black Box was, ironically, later bought by EA.) Chris Taylor, a designer and programmer that worked on Distinctive's Hardball II, The Duel and 4-D Boxing and EA's Triple Play '96, left the studio to start Gas Powered Games, developer of the Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander games. And Alex Garden, a game tester that started working for Distinctive when he was 15 years old, went on to co-found Relic Entertainment (of Homeworld and Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War fame) with a group of ex-EA and ex-Radical employees.
At this year's E3, you could find more evidence of Distinctive's lasting influence with the announcements of two ambitious racing games from a pair of brand new studios. BigPark, co-founded by Mattrick, Lemke, Mozell and Erik Kiss - all of whom are Distinctive alumni - showed off Joy Ride, a downloadable, highly customizable multiplayer racer for Xbox 360 that uses the system's Xbox Live avatars. And on the PS3 side, United Front Games' Mod Nation Racers introduces LittleBigPlanet-style content creation to a kart racing setting. United Front boasts founding members from EA, Radical, Black Box, Rockstar Vancouver, Propaganda Games, Next Level Games and Action Pants Inc., each of which can trace their lineage back to Distinctive.
Mattrick, for his part, was center stage for the introduction of Project Natal at Microsoft's E3 press conference. Once a 17-year-old programmer with a dream, he's now helping Microsoft run its Xbox 360, Xbox Live and Games for Windows services. His delivery of this major announcement proves he now ranks as one of the most powerful people in the videogame industry.
Back in Vancouver, Distinctive Software's impact on the city's development community is still felt today. In a strange synchronicity, the number of people working in Vancouver's game industry is approximately 3,500 - the same number as the amount of money Mattrick's father paid to buy his son the computer he used to program Evolution. No one could have known how many lives would be affected by that purchase and everything that followed from it, but a whole city's worth of game developers are thankful.
Chris LaVigne lived in Vancouver for 11 years. He's sorry about the whole Nickelback thing. Our bad.
