Chris Taylor

Chris Taylor is a Canadian video game designer best known for Total Annihilation and the Dungeon Siege and Supreme Commander series and co-founding the now-defunct studio Gas Powered Games. In 2002, GameSpy named him the "30th most influential person in gaming." In 2019, he revealed he has been working on Kanoogi, a cloud-based gaming platform, and developing his next game, Intergalactic Space Empire.

Career Taylor was born in British Columbia and started in the video game industry in the late 1980s at Distinctive Software in Burnaby. His first game was Hardball II released in 1989. Taylor moved to Seattle, Washington in January 1996 when he joined Cavedog Entertainment as the designer and project leader for the real-time strategy video game Total Annihilation and its first expansion, Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency. He left Cavedog in March 1998 and later founded Gas Powered Games two months later in May where he designed the action role-playing game Dungeon Siege. Its sequel, Dungeon Siege II, was released in 2005.

In the August 2005 edition of PC Gamer, it was announced that Gas Powered Games was developing Supreme Commander, Taylor's first real-time strategy game since 1997. It is described as the spiritual successor to Total Annihilation, but was not able to be named as such because Atari (formerly Infogrames) owns the rights to the Total Annihilation name. Although Atari has shown no interest in reviving the Total Annihilation franchise, the company nonetheless held on to it until July 2013. He helped create the game's standalone expansion Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance.

On January 14, 2013, Taylor funded a new project through Kickstarter, called Wildman. On February 11, 2013, Taylor shut down the kickstarter for Wildman prematurely. Four days before the campaign's end the pledged amount was only $504,120 of the required $1.1 million.

Shortly thereafter in 2013, Gas Powered Games was acquired by Wargaming, where Taylor was reported to be working on an unannounced project. Taylor left Wargaming in November 2016 with a forward looking statement to be part of indie gaming.

On April 24, 2019, Taylor unveiled Intergalactic Space Empire, a new real-time strategy game, while also announcing Kanoogi, a cloud-based gaming platform. Kanoogi will debut with Intergalactic Space Empire as its first title, with intentions to support a wider range of games in the future.

Awards Supreme Commander, released in 2007, has been dubbed "best RTS of E3 2006," the GameCritics Best Strategy Game Award and achieving high ratings from major game websites and magazines.

Games credited Year Title Role Developer 1989 HardBall II Designer, programmer Distinctive Software The Duel: Test Drive II 1991 4D Sports Boxing 1995 Triple Play Baseball '96 Extended Play 1997 Total Annihilation Director Cavedog Entertainment 1998 Total Annihilation: The Core Contingency 2002 Dungeon Siege Gas Powered Games 2003 Dungeon Siege: Legends of Arana Executive producer 2005 Dungeon Siege II Creative director 2006 Dungeon Siege: Throne of Agony SuperVillain Studios Dungeon Siege II: Broken World Gas Powered Games 2007 Supreme Commander Lead designer Supreme Commander: Forged Alliance Creative director 2008 Space Siege 2009 Demigod 2010 Supreme Commander 2 Lead designer 2011 Dungeon Siege III Adviser Obsidian Entertainment Age of Empires Online Creative director Robot EntertainmentGas Powered Games Intergalactic Space Empire Cancelled Chris Taylor's Kings and Castles Gas Powered Games Cancelled Wildman Project lead, Lead designer Gas Powered Games