Interesting discovery
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A few months ago, I decided to watch the Freelancer credits for no reason, and vaguely remembered a character on Trenton having the same name as one of the people on the list. Then I noticed the name Brandon Rowlett, who I immediately recognized as the FP7 survivor from Mission 4 who is brutally Moonstalkered to death upon entering California.
A couple days ago, I found that old post on TLR and wondered just how many devs named characters after themselves. So I got out good old FLed-IDS, and Googled the Freelancer credits. A surprising majority of the FL developers had named characters after themselves. Some people were so important that they even had TWO characters named after them, however, some of the unlucky ones who didn’t have a character named after them were the ones responsible for marketing, producers, etc…I recorded their names, the role they had in creating the game, and their identity in the game. I’ve attached the list, in case you care.
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That was quite fun.
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Brandon Rowlett, I guess that’s where the name for the weapon come from too, Rowlett’s Revenge? Great find and I never really noticed it even when reviewing the credits many years ago.
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Cool! I also noticed a person with the last name Cryer, so we now know where Cryer Pharmaceuticals comes from
I see there’s no “Sean Ashcroft” there.
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Sizer wrote:
That’s because Sean Ashcroft NEVER EXISTEDgiggles
I can never read that name without thinking that it’s a very visible riff on “John Ashcroft” (especially with that ‘notorious wanted criminal’ bit)
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Quick addition as not many seem to know it. The Bartender on the New Berlin is named after the creator of Lancers Reactor - Christian Koerner (Bargib)
You can also see a few of the original “staff” of TLR in the multi-player screen shot in the Freelancer manual
Several of the US guys got to go to Austin, Texas, to meet DA Indeed, one staff member who was involved in beta testing (nearly all of the original staff were) ran the only allowed test server outside of the DA offices (i.e. online!) during the beta.
All this used to be common knowledge, but appears no-one knows anymore - even those who make claims about their role in FL history (non present here).
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So what’s the story with the original Lancers then, I assumed it was something born out of modding Freelancer, did it exist before that?
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Not sure when the original Lancers was started, 1999-2000? maybe before, cant really say, wasn’t paying to much attention back then. But, back in the day they were modding DA’s “Starlancer” and promoting “Bruteforce” a game I still know nothing about. That and wildly postulating the features of Freelancer and what ramifications it would have on the multiplayer community as a whole
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IIRC way back Microsoft ran a fan fiction contest and sponsored it through TLR?
