Homeworld
Relic Entertainment was founded in Vancouver, Canada, on June 1, 1997, and began work on "Homeworld" as their first title. Relic co-founders Alex Garden and Luke Moloney served as the director and lead programmer for the game, respectively, while Erin Daly was the designer and Aaron Kambeitz the lead artist. Garden was 22 years old when he founded the company. Writer David J. Williams is credited with the original story concept, while the script itself was written by Martin Cirulis and the background lore was written by author Arinn Dembo. Cirulis and Dembo, credited jointly as "Marcus Skyler", were selected by the publisher, Sierra Studios, partway through development to expand the story concept of Relic and Williams. Sierra agreed to publish the game early in development based on, according to Garden, "two whiteboard presentations and no demo". The development of the game took over two years; the game systems were largely complete by the final eight months, which Relic spent polishing and improving the game, including adding the whole-map Sensors Manager view. The game was initially expected to be released at the end of 1998; Garden stated in a 1999 interview that the team found creating the core game itself much easier than getting it to the quality level they wanted, and that if they had known how difficult it was going to be they may have chosen not to do the project. Several ideas for the game, including ship customization, convoy routes, and different unit types for the Kushan and Taidann fleets were cut during development as they could not be done well enough for the project.
Bob Rafelson
While working on the TV series "The Wackiest Ship in the Army" for Screen Gems in 1965, Rafelson met fellow producer Bert Schneider. They became fast friends and created the company Raybert Productions together that year. Raybert would later become BBS Productions and produce films as a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. Encouraged by the Beatles' film "A Hard Day's Night" and Beatlemania in general, Rafelson and Schneider's first project was a television series about a rock 'n' roll group. However, Rafelson said, "I had conceived the show before The Beatles existed," and it was based on his time as an itinerant musician more "interested in having fun" than "in earning a living." Raybert Productions sold the idea to Screen Gems and, when they were unable to get either the Dave Clark Five or the Lovin' Spoonful for the show, ran ads in "Daily Variety" and "The Hollywood Reporter" for musicians. The band that they created was The Monkees and the series ran from 1966 until 1968.