Lawrence Holland

Lawrence Holland, also known as Larry Holland is a video game designer best known for the X-wing computer game series. He worked for Lucasfilm's games division and later LucasArts where he worked on several games, including the X-wing series, starting with Star Wars: X-wing and Star Wars: TIE Fighter. After leaving LucasArts he founded Totally Games and continued to develop Star Wars: X-wing vs. TIE Fighter and Star Wars: X-wing Alliance for LucasArts.

Early life


Lawrence Holland graduated Magna Cum Laude from Cornell University in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in Anthropology and Prehistoric Archeaology. After graduating, he spent two years participating in archaeological expeditions in Africa, Europe and India, after which he planned to return to university to study for a doctorate in Anthropology. He has since commented on the irony of studying man's evolution and the development of the most primitive tools, only to later embark on a career in computing. When Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope was released in 1977, Holland saw the film twice in the cinema, and only a handful more times before he came to be involved in Star Wars several years later. Over the years, Holland would also come to develop an interest in hawk watching, which is now among his favorite hobbies.

Developer
Holland's change of career happened almost accidentally. An encounter with an Atari 800 owner who was attempting to program a game for his computer first caught Holland's interest. After buying his own computer, a Commodore 64, in 1982, Holland quickly became enthralled and devoted much of his time to understanding how the computer worked. His curiosity led him to start programming games and he found that, unlike archaeology where he had studied others' inventions, programming gave him the opportunity to create something himself. Seeing it as a chance to combine his professional and personal interests, Holland decided to embark on a career in game development.

Holland got his first opportunity in early 1983, when he was hired by Human Engineered Software (HESware) to program for the Commodore VIC-20 and C-64 computers. Much of his early work involved converting arcade games, such as Super Zaxxon, to run on the home computers. The first game he worked on was the "green ooze" based SLIME and he was later involved in Spike's Peak, a game which he now mentions only reluctantly. He was given the chance to be creative in 1984, when he designed his first original game, Project: Space Station, which was also his first simulation.

Lucasfilm Games
In mid-1986, Holland learned that Lucasfilm Games (now LucasArts Entertainment Company) was looking for a programmer to convert their first simulation game from the C-64 to the Apple II. Holland had experience in programming for both systems, as well as with simulations due to his recent work on Project: Space Station. He was eager to pursue his work on simulations, but wanted to continue working freelance, and the Lucasfilm Games position allowed for both. After joining Lucasfilm Games, Holland was one of less than a dozen staff based in George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch. His first project was working with Noah Falstein to convert the modern naval simulation game PHM Pegasus, developed for Electronic Arts since Lucasfilm Games were not yet a publisher, to the Apple II. The project furthered his growing interest in military history and inspired him to start thinking of worlds he would like to simulate. He would later work on Strike Fleet, another naval simulation for Lucasfilm Games and Electronic Arts.

Much of Holland's early work involved programming but, with the relatively small teams assigned to each game, he soon found opportunities to work in other areas, including game design. From 1988, he took on full game design and project management roles, in addition to his programming work and, together with his team, began working on a series of flight simulators set in World War II. The games, Battlehawks 1942 (1988), Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain (1989) and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe (1991), helped Holland to gain a reputation as one of the industry's best simulator developers.

Star Wars: X-wing
By the time Battlehawks 1942 was released in 1988, Holland had already given some thought to the idea of a space combat simulator. The obvious subject matter for Lucasfilm Games to develop such a game was Star Wars but the license to produce games on the series was held by Brøderbund at the time and the idea was put on hold. When Brøderbund's license expired, the idea came up once more and, in February 1991, Lucasfilm Games asked Edward Kilham to begin work on the project. The game, Star Wars: X-wing, was in its planning stages while Holland was still working on Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe and the original intention was for Kilham to lead the project himself. Kilham, however, felt that producing the kind of simulator the project required would need Holland's expertise so, after Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe was completed, Holland's team joined Kilham in working on the project.

As the exclusive holders of the Star Wars license, the team did not have to worry about competition as they had with their World War II efforts and found that they had more freedom in the project. Holland and Kilham each led on different parts of the game, working on design, programming and project management, with Holland focusing on the flight engine, while Kilham worked on the front-end. Inspired by the storyline elements of Wing Commander, and a desire to create a flight engine which was more engaging and allowed players flexibility in approaching missions, the two began combining Holland's technology with Kilham's cinematic approach to storytelling. With Peter Lindcroff developing a 3D engine which went beyond the one used by Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, the game would be technologically advanced for the time, moving away from bit maps to use polygons. Holland's flight engine complimented this by increasing the number of potential craft in missions from around fifteen in Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe to around twenty-eight.

The developers watched all films in the original trilogy, paying close attention to the style and performance of the ships, as well as looking for potential situations for the game. They also tried to tie in some elements from the growing Expanded Universe of books, comics and the West End Games roleplaying game. One of the most important elements was attempting to balance the game to ensure that the player remained central to success, in the hopes of recreating the heroic scale of Luke Skywalker's adventures. The initial design was elaborate but, with a desire to get the project moving quickly, they were soon able to trim it down to something achievable.