Tomb Raider

Original series at Core Design (1994–2006) The concept for Tomb Raider originated in 1994 at Core Design, a British game development studio. One of the people involved in its creation was Toby Gard , who was mostly responsible for creating the character of Lara Croft. Gard originally envisioned the character as a man: company co-founder Jeremy Heath-Smith was worried the character would be seen as derivative of Indiana Jones , so Gard changed the character's gender. Her design underwent multiple revisions and redrafts during early development.

The game proved an unexpected commercial success, reversing Eidos' then-bleak financial situation. After the success of Tomb Raider , work began on a sequel. Gard was no longer given creative control of the character, and it was stated by development staff that he was both saddened and disappointed by the use of Lara Croft's sex appeal in marketing. Gard left Core Design in 1997, alongside Tomb Raider co-creator Paul Douglas, to found their own gaming company Confounding Factor .

The remaining team members, alongside new arrivals, would work on the sequel Tomb Raider II which released a year after the original game and proved as big a commercial success. The development team were burned out by release due to the extreme crunch policy at Core Design. The vision for the franchise in late 1997 involved an expansion pack for Tomb Raider II , entitled The Further Adventures of Lara Croft , followed by a survival game called Tomb Raider III to be released two or three years later for the PlayStation 2 . Eidos were initially behind this direction, but later were driven by a desire to have annual releases for the Christmas window.

This led them to request that a second team be created to develop an expanded version of The Further Adventures and release that as Tomb Raider III in the interim. The decision was not communicated to the original team, which learned of the move only when Tomb Raider III was publicly announced as a 1998 title for the original PlayStation. They were exhausted and withdrew from the PlayStation 2 project in response, which was soon cancelled. The Tomb Raider II team did not work on the franchise again, with some team members going on to work on Project Eden .

Going forwards the franchise would be worked on by the Tomb Raider III team, and in line with Eidos' vision for the franchise they would aim for annual releases. Core Design's policy at the time involved years-long crunch periods, which placed strain on them and ultimately led to similar burnout. For this reason, and the feeling that they had exhausted the series' potential, the team tried to kill off Lara at the end of the fourth game, The Last Revelation . Eidos insisted that the series continue, and so Chronicles was developed by the Tomb Raider team while an additional group made preparations for the transition to PlayStation 2 with The Angel of Darkness .

The Chronicles team strongly disliked being forced to continue the franchise, with the lead animator enjoying creating new death animations for Lara on that basis. The game was poorly received, with reviewers suggesting the series was growing stale. During this period, multiple handheld titles were developed by both Core Design and third-party developers. The production of The Angel of Darkness was beset by problems from an early stage, with the team wanting to create a grander game to compete with contemporary action-adventure games.

When the Chronicles team came back over to work on The Angel of Darkness , they found that production had completely "gone off the rails", with the entire project having been scrapped and restarted once already. Under pressure from Eidos, key sections of the game needed to be cut, and it was released before the team felt it was ready. It also suffered from crunch and burnout. The game received negative reactions from critics, and was cited by Paramount as the reason for the second Tomb Raider film underperforming.

While development of the next title Legend moved to Crystal Dynamics, Core Design continued to work on the franchise. A remake of the original game for PlayStation Portable was in development there, entitled 10th Anniversary . While Eidos had been averse to further Tomb Raider titles from the group, their recent purchase by SCi meant that the decision would now be made by the new parent company, and they were in favour. By 2006 the title was nearly finished, but after Crystal Dynamics sent a demo to SCi showing the first level of Legend running on PSP, 10th Anniversary was cancelled and Crystal Dynamics were charged with remaking the original instead.

One of the key reasons for this was the fact that Crystal Dynamics had stronger capabilities to do a cross-platform launch. The decision "went down like a cup of cold sick" at Core Design. The studio attempted to reskin the title as a National Treasure or Indiana Jones game in the wake of the decision, but these did not come to fruition. The loss of the Tomb Raider IP was a factor in the studio's closure several years later.