The History Of: the Settlers

“With Settlers we got lucky, it really caught people’s attention,” recalls Thomas Hertzler, cofounder of German studio Blue Byte. “It was the best game that we’d ever had the opportunity to deliver. We all thought it was the bee’s knees.” And best of all, it landed in the company’s lap at a time when it was desperate for a hit to stave off bankruptcy. Hertzler founded Blue Byte in August 1988 with Lothar Schmitt, initially operating out of Hertzler’s attic in Mülheim. The two of them had previously worked together at Rainbow Arts, publisher of the Super Mario Bros ‘homage’ The Great Giana Sisters, but both were ready for a new challenge. “He and I, we hit it off pretty well, and so we decided to set up our own company, and that’s what we did,” recalls Hertzler. “[We were] young, naive and bulletproof – so sure, why not?”

Some of the first titles they released were Great Courts in 1989 (also known as Jimmy Connor’s Pro Tennis Tour) and the turn-based tactics game Battle Isle in 1991. “I was into strategy games and Lothar was into sports games,” says Hertzler, explaining the odd genre dichotomy. Both sold reasonably well, but Hertzler felt that Battle Isle in particular could have sold much more, and wondered whether that was down to the publisher, Ubisoft. “It’s very hard to tell,” he says, “Is it the lack of support from the publisher? Or is it just the game? When you do it yourself, you can tell, but if you have that middleman, you just don’t know. And I think it could have done better.”

So for the next game, 1992’s History Line: 1914-1918, Blue Byte renegotiated its deal with Ubisoft, taking over publishing duties for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and leaving the French firm to handle the rest of Europe. But although the game reviewed well, sales were underwhelming – something Hertzler puts down to choosing to depict World War I rather than World War II. Suddenly, the pressure was on