Ubisoft Reflections

History

Martin Edmondson and Nicholas Chamberlain started developing games for the BBC Micro under the moniker "Reflections" in 1984. Their first game was a Paperboy clone called Paper-Round that took two years to develop but was never released. While working on that game, it started Ravenskull which would be its first published game, released in 1986 by Superior Software. This was followed by Codename: Droid and an Acorn Electron conversion of Stryker's Run in 1987.

The name Reflections was first used for their 1989 hit Amiga game, Shadow of the Beast, published by Psygnosis which spawned two sequels. The original Amiga game was partially written by Paul Howarth, and started out life as a parallax test of the blitter of the Amiga's Agnus chip; Paul later went on to work for Deep Red Games, a UK video game company based in Milton Keynes. A number of other Amiga and Atari ST games followed including Ballistix (1989), Awesome (1990) and Brian the Lion (1994). In 1995, it became known for Destruction Derby, which was critically acclaimed for its realistic physics and destruction, which later become Reflections' specialty. Due to the success, the game had four more sequels over the years.

On 9 January 1999, it was announced that Reflections had been acquired by GT Interactive in 1998, for a reported 2.7 million shares of common stock, which was valued at around US$14.17 million. Reflections became well known for the game Driver, which was inspired by '70s cop shows like Starsky and Hutch and movies like Bullitt and The Driver. It has been followed by four sequels and four spin-offs. The company was subsequently renamed Reflections Interactive.

In 2004, studio founder Martin Edmondson left Reflections after the concepting stage of Driver: Parallel Lines, and sued Atari due to "constructive unfair dismissal as a result of Reflections alleged repudiatory breach of a contract of employment that necessitated Mr. Edmondson's resignation." Martin's brother, Gareth Edmondson, took his place as the studio manager. In July 2006, Atari announced that it had transferred all of the staff and most of the assets of Reflections Interactive Limited, including the intellectual property and technology rights to the Driver series, to Ubisoft for US$24 million.

Studio manager Gareth Edmondson, left Reflections after more than a ten-year presence at the studio in November 2011, two months after the launch of Driver: San Francisco. It was announced in February 2013, that Pauline Jacquey had been hired as new managing director.