CREATIVE ASSEMBLY

From ancient history to the far future: how the Sega studio has retained its identity

- NIC REUBEN

CURRENT ASSEMBLY

Founded 1987

Employees 843

Key staff Gareth Edmondson (studio director), Alistair Hope (creative director)

URL www.creative-assembly.com

Selected softography Rome: Total War, Alien: Isolation, Total War: Warhammer

Current projects Untitled sci-fi shooter

Even 26 years ago, Alien: Isolation creative director Alistair Hope was desperate to make videogames, he tells us. "I actually right to the end of my fine art degree. Was I really going to have a go at being a traditional artist? And I picked up a copy of Edge, the one with Mario 64 on the cover. It was this era as 16bit was moving into the 3D world, and it all looked super-exciting. Then, at the back, there were adverts for jobs in game development. That blew my mind. I'd always assumed it would be such a cool job that it wouldn't be advertised anywhere. From that moment, I decided that's what I'm going to do - and three months later I started at CA."