Exhibitions
Biographies
introversion
Introversion Software labels itself "The last of the bedroom programmers". It was founded in 2002 by three friends, Chris Delay, Mark Morris and Thomas Arundel, who met when they were undergraduates at Imperial College London. They have created games such as the debut title Uplink and Darwinia.
Darwinia was released to much critical acclaim and was eventually re-released over Steam on December 14, 2005. Uplink has also since joined Darwinia on Steam, as of summer 2006. On September 29, 2006, Introversion Software launched its third game DEFCON.
Their latest game Multiwinia is a multiplayer follow up to Darwinia and was released on September 19 2008 and it has been well received by the community and Indie gamers alike. Introversion has a relatively small but growing following and its games are considered cult classics. Both Uplink and Darwinia have a strong modding community.
John Hare
Jon Hare was the co-founder of Sensible Software with his friend, Chris Yates. The pair met at school in Great Baddow, Chelmsford, Essex.
Their first game as Sensible Software was Parallax, produced over six months, followed by budget release Galaxibird. In 1987, they partnered with Manchester-based Ocean Software with Wizball, a unique horizontally-scrolling game.
Jon and Chris used Parallax and Wizball to promote their next release, the Shoot Em Up Construction Kit and Cannon Fodder was released shortly afterwards but it was Sensible Soccer which made their name.
Jon had already produced Microprose Soccer for the Commodore 64, but he wanted to have another stab at the football genre four years later. Sensible Soccer was a 2D top-down game that appeared initially on the Amiga and Atari ST in 1992, later being converted to the PC and Megadrive among many other platforms.
Sensi spawned a sequel, Sensible World of Soccer, in 1994 - by far the better game - adding decent management elements for an all-round package. Sensible World of Soccer was recently revived by Codemasters and is available on the Xbox 360 via Xbox Live Arcade.
The Oliver Twins
The Oliver Twins are two British brothers, Philip and Andrew Oliver, who started to professionally develop computer games while they were still at school. Their first game, Super Robin Hood for the Amstrad CPC, was published in 1985 by Codemasters. They are most well known for the Dizzy series of computer games.
In 1991, at the age of 22, they started Interactive Studios, now called Blitz Games Studios. Apart from their own games, the Oliver Twins were also responsible for porting a number of other prominent games to the Sega platforms, including Theme Park and Syndicate.
Arthur Parsons
Arthur Parsons is Head of Design at TTGames. Based in Knutsford, Cheshire, the firm is well known for developing games based on popular films.
It has worked with Disney on game versions of Toy Story and Finding Nemo and it is also behind the blockbuster LEGO games starring some of Hollywood's greatest icons.
LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Indiana Jones and LEGO Batman have proved a hit with children. The characters are modelled like actual LEGO parts and they combine platforming fun with simple combat and puzzles.
Traveller's Tales has also worked with Sega's official mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, producing Sonic 3D and Sonic R.
The company is now owned by Warner Bros.
Matthew Smith
Born in Penge, in Surrey, in 1966, Matthew Smith moved to Wallasey when he was seven and after leaving school aged 16, he started to produce games, creating Delta Tower One for Tandy's TRS-80 computer and Monster Muncher for the Commodore VIC-20.
He later worked as a freelance programmer for Liverpool-based Bug Byte Software, first writing Styx in 1983 before spending just six weeks creating Manic Miner.
He kept the rights to that game and transferred them to Software Projects for whom he programmed the sequel, Jet Set Willy. Both games were smash hits and Smith became a videogame star.
Smith began to work on other titles – The Mega Tree and Attack of the Mutant Zombie Flesh Eating Chickens From Mars – which never saw the light of day and in 1988, he vanished without a trace. Websites were set up in the 1990s in the hope of tracking him down and solving the mystery of why he decided to suddenly stop programming.
It emerged he had been living in a commune in the Netherlands, fixing pedal bikes. In 1997, and following deportation from Holland, he returned to the UK, taking a job at games developer Runecraft in 1999. He helped produce Scrabble for the Game Boy Colour before the firm went into receivership.
Jonathan Cauldwell
Cronosoft is a software house which specialises in publishing games for retro machines. One of the most prolific programmers for the company is Jonathan Cauldwell. He provided Cronosoft with its first release, Egghead in Space for the ZX Spectrum. Cronosoft released it on cassette with a full printed tape inlay, making it look like a game players would have purchased in a shop in the 1980s. The company produces games for the Commodore 64, Vic 20, Amstrad CPC, and BBC Micro.
David Braben
Elite. Enough said. David Braben goes down in history as having created one of the best ever videogames that continues to top polls to this day.
Acornsoft released Elite in 1984 and it was a massively popular and influential space trading game. For Cambridge graduate Braben, born in 1964, it was the realisation of a dream, a successful collaboration with his friend, Ian Bell, while still at university.
Elite was pioneering, not least for its 3D graphics and open ended game play. Since that release, Braben has become a strong figure in the British games industry.
He went on to found Frontier Developments whose first project was Fronteir, a sequel to Elite. Recent projects include RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 and the critically acclaimed LostWinds, a launch title for Nintendo's WiiWare service.
On September 5, 2005, he was awarded the Development Legend Award at the Develop Industry Excellence Awards in Cambridge.
Ocean
Ocean Software was one of Europe's largest publishers in the 1980s and early 1990s. It initially published games from independent developers across Britain but after a couple of years, Ocean became a developer and snapped up young, emerging talent to work in-house.
With an average age of 19, the programmers were loyal and keen and one of Ocean's strengths was in its ability to snap up film and arcade licenses. It worked closely with Hollywood and overseas game developers to port home computer versions of some of entertainment's biggest names.
Ocean became based on Central Street, Manchester, and the programmers hardly saw daylight - they were holed up in the building’s basement.
Gary Bracey, Ocean's former development director, said Manchester was chosen because it was believed to have had a more credible commercial perception than Liverpool, due to the left wing image the Merseyside city portrayed at the time.” The company was sold to Infogrames in 1998.
Charles Cecil
Revolution produced Lure of the Temptress, Beneath a Steel Sky and Broken Sword, a title so loved it spawned three sequels. Revolution is headed by Charles Cecil. Educated at Bedales School in Hampshire, England, he studied mechanical engineering at Manchester University in 1980.
Armed with a £10,000 loan from his mother, formed Revolution Software with friends, Tony Warriner and David Sykes. Initially based in Hull, the company later moved to York.
It was decided early on that Revolution would produce games that would be serious and yet have a humorous touch. It would, they felt, distance what they were doing from the competition at the time, not least The Secret of Monkey Island, which was packed with jokes.
It led to Beneath a Steel Sky having a serious dystopian message and to Broken Sword being steeped in history. It worked... Lure of the Temptress, Beneath a Steel Sky and the Broken Sword became cult classics and hugely popular, big sellers.
Charles is on the advisory panel of the Edinburgh Interactive Entertainment Festival and Develop Conference. He co-founded Game Republic, an alliance of game developers, of which he is a director. He is a Board member of Screen Yorkshire, a regional agency which supports film, television and interactive entertainment in Yorkshire and, in 2006, Charles was awarded the status of ‘industry legend’ by Develop, Europe’s leading development magazine.