The X-COM itch 'never goes away', says X-COM creator Julian Gollop
Did you know Julian Gollop has written four columns for us, including subjects like the creation of the deckbuilder genre? Find them all here(opens in new tab).
X-COM: UFO Defense, known as UFO: Enemy Unknown here in the UK, is an integral part of PC gaming history. It was part of the MicroProse glory days of the mid-'90s, when ground-breaking strategy games were being spat out at an unbelievable rate. It spawned sequels, questionable spin-offs, and multiple successors, spiritual and otherwise. It's an impressive legacy, and for creator Julian Gollop, the X-COM itch «never goes away».
While the X-COM/XCOM series is now 10 games deep, Gollop was only responsible for the original and Apocalypse, the third game. Of course, none of them would have existed without him, his brother Nick, and the tiny team of artists that built the game that started it all. And now you can't fire up a store like Steam or Epic without seeing countless turn-based strategy and tactics romps, many of them capitalising on the success of Firaxis's XCOM.
«XCOM was basically a triple-A turn-based tactics game that was immensely popular, and I think that's kind of broken the perception of turn-based games as being something old-fashioned and unappealing,» says Gollop. «So I have a lot to thank Firaxis for that one.»
Gollop also notes all the interesting turn-based tactical RPGs that continue to appear, especially the ones that draw from tabletop games, like Wildermyth and Gloomhaven. With this greater overlap between tabletop and digital, and so many more people getting into board games, there's an incredible amount of diversity, both in terms of the audience and the games themselves.
A quarter of a century after X-COM, Gollop and Snapshot Games
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