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Games Master ~ 27th December 2009

When I talk about being a "game designer", people assume I'm referring exclusively to games of the computerized kind. For me, it has always gone beyond that. The irony is that I spent even more time making games WITHOUT technology! From the age of 5 I had been knocking together my own card games, dice games, board games - and all manner of bizarre inventions that defy categorization. The decade I spent making them with a computer was practically a detour! I fondly imagine that I would have been making traditional games for a living if I had been born into a different era. At this time of year I become especially captivated by them, as people of all ages descend on the family home and games of a different kind are on the table. I can't help but take a professional interest in the proceedings. I was especially impressed when I was reintroduced to exquisitely simple games like Scrabble, Chess, and even Jenga. When the word "game" is mentioned to me, these remarkable inventions are the first thing to come to my mind. Modern videogames are little more than interactive movies by comparison! As entertaining as that is, there's something about it that falls short of a truly innovative "game". Tetris is about the only digital creation that comes close. It's a creative spirit I attempted to keep alive in my own work with abstract ideas like Sure Shot and, most recently, Moksha. Sports also tend to be the ultimate example of a simple concept that is revealed to have unlimited depth. I'm equally fascinated by them - right down to the subtle genius of pastimes like Snooker and Pool. The only exception is Darts, which continues to baffle me as a piece of game design. Why more points for "20" when it's no harder to hit than any other segment of the board?! Whenever a game is played in my presence, I must preside over the rules like some sort of omniscient deity. I can instinctively re-arrange a game's components to work better in any given environment. This Christmas, I even had to intervene in the humble affair of guessing which famous name is taped to your forehead! Our incompetent host had 12 of us doing it one by one, so I had to insist that we each take turns to ask one question each so that the energy would remain high. Only then did the dead circle become alive with life and laughter. I also pride myself on being rather good at any given game, as my brain explores the intricacies of the rules like a piece of code and ensures victory. I even took this skill with me to China, where I managed to beat the locals at Mahjong with the best possible hand - despite having only learnt to read the Chinese characters an hour previously! I'm not sure what the future holds for me as a game designer, but I hope the purity of some of these creations rubs off on me. It makes me laugh when people think your life has malfunctioned in some way just because you're not in the public eye anymore. My work with games began in privacy, temporarily became public, and has now returned behind closed doors. Like life itself, creativity never dies - it only ever changes form...

Free Fall ~ 17th December 2009

There were many reasons I elected to publish my games as boxed products towards the end of 2002. One was that the increasingly sophisticated games were becoming too big to toss around a 56k Internet connection and fared better on a disc. That sounds ridiculous now, but it's only recently that broadband became standard and made concerns about file sizes a thing of the past! An accompanying reason was that published products enjoy a more respectable status, and ironically end up reaching more people. Publish books are a prime example of this. How much would you prefer to thumb through one of those rather than read a 300-page essay online?! But above all else, selling the games - in any available format - was of course a means of funding their existence in the first place. By the time I was creating 3D epics in 2003, making games was a full-time gig for me. I either did it for a living or I couldn't do it at all - at least not to that standard. So thanks to those of you who did see fit to purchase the games. Your contributions truly were the bricks that built an empire. As for those who justified "pirating" my independent efforts in increasingly grotesque ways, you're the reason there won't be a Wrestling MPire 2010. All you people do is hit the pause button on a piece of entertainment you've discovered. "Destroying the thing you claim to love," as Oscar Wilde would have put it. It's nothing to be proud of or smug about. Nonetheless, all of the above reasons are no longer justified now that I don't make games for a living and the projects can now be made available for free. I no longer need to release them physically, I no longer need to promote them, and I no longer need the revenue from them. That there was "revenue" you can be sure, for those of you who would attribute this development to "failure" of some kind. My definition of "failure" is still clocking up more downloads and selling more copies than most other independents! What we have here is a scenario where the games are better off being played by as many people as possible, as effortlessly as possible, rather than accumulating small change. I'm interested in making my life less complicated at this point in time, so it's with some relief that I put business concerns to one side. That said, the compilation CD will still be available to purchase (at an insignificant price) for those who wish to own the full body of work at its best and in a convenient format. Hopefully, the wisdom of my decision to go freeware will become clear throughout 2010 as people come to the games in a new way. Like a butterfly emerging from the corpse of a caterpillar, my professional career has to "die" so that something else might "live" more vibrantly. Watch this space. This is not the beginning of the end so much as the end of the beginning...

Back To The Future ~ 27th November 2009

There are two things that excite me about re-releasing the games as freeware. One is that they reach more people with less fuss, and are therefore played with rather more goodwill (which is always essential for independent releases). But more importantly, it's becoming clear that my games had hidden qualities that are only just beginning to be unlocked by technology. The recently released World War Alpha is a good case in point. When it was first made back in 2006, very few computers could handle its ambitious 60-man battles. Mine certainly couldn't. Now, however, the gloves are off and any computer bought in the past 12 months can handle ANYTHING my work dares to throw at it! If you haven't played games like World War Alpha since you last bought a new computer, it may be worth revisiting it to crank the volume up and enjoy it on a different level. I suspect this will also become true of Wrestling MPire 2008, which was demanding at the time but will become increasingly versatile. As with my return to Reach, I forgot how much I enjoyed World War Alpha as a concept too. It's not half as bad as its commercial failure implied. It may be simplistic compared to its mainstream counterparts like Star Wars Battlefront and co, but there can be no doubt that it does interesting things with the genre. I never realized how spiritual the plot was, as the mysteries of life are viewed differently from the past and the present (and not always for the best!). It many ways, games like this set the tone for The You Testament which followed a couple of years later. Once all of my games are available for free - and are fully customizable to boot - I suspect the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place quite nicely and the true significance of my work will become clear...

Jockin' MD ~ 17th November 2009

Further to an earlier post ("The Pie Thrower", 30th September 2009), I suspect the phantom book reviewer can be traced to this grubby little forum where co-ordinated attacks on my character were being plotted. Suffice to say, it's a putrid sewer of baseless opinion - gushing forth from a group of inarticulate programmers who have never achieved anything. I had given the reviewer the credence of being a legitimate part of the games industry. It turns out that his "27 years of experience" amount to being the tea-boy in some IT department somewhere, and his "colleagues" are none other than those he corresponds with online. I did suspect that a legitimate game designer wouldn't have the time or the inclination to engage in this kind of stuff. I certainly never did while I was busy achieving various things. These tirades against my work are so self-defeating. They accuse me of being a talentless loser and then proceed to spend days on end talking about such an individual?! They accuse me of being "arrogant" and then spew the kind of mean-spirited filth that would never cross my lips. I'm fascinated by evil and wretchedness. I always wondered whether Nazi concentration camp guards would glance at each other and rhetorically ask, "Are we the bad guys?" It's a fitting question for these people to ask themselves. Do they genuinely believe they're the "good guys" and I'm the villain of the piece? Do they ever glance back over the filth they wrote and concede that it wasn't justified and wilts in the light of my dignified response? Ditto for the cowards you often find commenting on YouTube videos. These people make my critics in the Blitz community look positively civilized! Speaking of whom, I understand they also have a pissy little thread about my book. I'm not entirely sure one of their number isn't responsible for the review in question. I wouldn't put it past them, since they search tirelessly to find holes in my work so as to feel better about their insignificant output. Either way, we can chalk it up to a miserable human being who criticizes more than he contributes. Incidentally, anybody posting under the name of "MDickie" is an impostor. Anything I have to say can always be found at this site first...

Reaching Back ~ 24th October 2009

I don't usually like to play my own games - even though they're tailor-made to suit my tastes! It's rather like an actor watching himself back on film. It promises to be a thoroughly uncomfortable experience where you cringe at mistakes made and lament that it's too late to rectify them. I especially feel this way about games that weren't particularly successful. I fear I will realize what everybody else found so disagreeable about them. That's what was going through my mind as I booted up my boxing simulator Reach for the first time in 2 years. Although it won "Sports Game Of The Year" in 2007 and I was immensely proud of it at the time, it failed to draw a substantial audience. I suspected I would find out why as I played it again. But on the contrary, I was pleasantly surprised by what I encountered. The visuals looked great in a cartoony Nintendo 64 kind of way, and the fighting was perfectly responsive and satisfying - more so than most of the motion-captured nonsense we've seen from mainstream releases. Above all else, the match I played unfolded perfectly. It was as dramatic as anything from the Rocky movies, as tides turned and my opponent was gradually reduced to a stumbling mess on the canvas! It was full of the unpredictability and spontaneity that I worked so hard to put into my games. I suspect I will enjoy Wrestling MPire 2008 just as much when I eventually return to that. But I was left with an overwhelming feeling of sadness that such work could not find a bigger audience. I couldn't even use Vista or technology as an excuse, because I was trying it out on a brand new PC that had exactly that - and there were no problems at all. Perhaps the fact that the games were published releases had finally started to become a negative thing rather than a positive thing. My humble output was the kind that people were happy to PLAY but not to PAY for. I had no choice when I was a professional. I either made games of that size for a living or a didn't do it at all - at least not effectively. But over the following 6 months, the work that was produced during that professional period will finally be made available for free. Perhaps then it will find its way onto more computers and will be appreciated more than ever. Not least because the way they were made will become abundantly clear, and my games will truly become an "interactive" experience that lives for another 10 years in the hands of someone else...

Face The Music ~ 10th October 2009

When I look back over my career and put it into perspective, I'm happy to concede that my solo output wasn't all that great. But one thing I'll always be proud of is how "complete" the projects were. Many people design and program games, and some of those programmers are capable of knocking some decent visuals together too. But very few strayed into the world of sound and music the way I did - adding that responsibility to an already burgeoning workload. Although my work in that field (like all the others) was far from perfect, it was certainly better than I or anyone else ever expected - as one distinct theme after another was attached to each project. And all this from somebody who didn't even know anything about music at the time! It was the gaming equivalent of the Prophet Muhammad composing great poetry despite being illiterate. In order to avoid those achievements being overlooked as the years progress and the games are loaded up less and less, I've put together a dedicated Music section that makes the tunes available to download. Here they're provided as extended high quality MP3's that weren't possible in a gaming environment. I've also offered my recollections about making each piece, so it's worth a glance for those that are curious...  

The Pie Thrower ~ 30th September 2009

My attention has only just been drawn to an interesting review of my book on Amazon. I would have liked to respond to it personally, but the character-assassinating coward didn't leave any contact details (or even a real name) so I have to make something public here. Coming from a supposedly "professional" game developer of 27 years, it has the illusion of being a credible verdict on my career. Indeed, 90% of you have already fallen for it - claiming to have found it most "helpful". Far be it from me to interrupt my enemies while they're making a mistake, but I would like to explore the flawed logic on display. The review is actually quite perceptive in the connections it makes between my upbringing and my conduct as a solo game developer. "Perceptive" in the sense that it mimics me being perceptive about myself. Admitting to and then exploring that connection was the WHOLE POINT of the book! It never ceases to amaze me how people think they can kill me with ammunition I GIVE THEM. It's rather like when I allow people to punch me in my toned torso. I don't have an awful lot to fear. (Not that an unhealthy cretin that proudly calls himself "The Pie Eater" would know anything about that.) Nor do I have anything to fear when I'm honest about the details of my life. I draw attention to my insecurities because they've been conquered and are part of my past rather than my present. There aren't many people that can say that. I doubt you can. Quite frankly, I think it's more "psychotic" to criticize someone's life mercilessly just because you don't happen to like the work they did or the methods they used. Yes, my solo output was crude and easy to criticize - and I'd be the first to do it. But show me a man that's never made a mistake and I'll show you a man that's never tried anything new. Like you, traipsing into your 28th year of being a cog in a machine. It's quite poetic that I'm writing this on my 28th birthday. You've been making games longer than I've been on the planet! And yet, embarrassingly enough, you've made so little impact in all that time that I don't actually know who the hell you are. We're here talking about MY career - not yours. Is this what I have to look forward to in another 10 years? Moping around Amazon reading books about people I don't like, and criticizing people half my age because they had the audacity to try something new? Sounds like I bailed out at just the right time to preserve my dignity. Thanks for saying my book was "eloquent" and well written though (why not 5 stars for that?). I'm not entirely sure how that goes hand in hand with being "talentless", but it certainly hints at what I'm doing with my talents now. Within 6 months of retiring from making games full-time, my "eloquent" words won a national poetry contest and scored me a publishing deal for 2 other books in a completely unrelated field. I'll look out for your insightful verdict on those as you continue to study my rollercoaster ride of an existence. You consider me to be a "failure"? On the contrary, you've just proved that even my enemies are paying customers...

Back In A Flash ~ 21st September 2009

There were many reasons I stopped making games at the end of 2008, but chief among them was the fact that heavyweight PC games were no longer working for me... or you! Every day, my inbox was awash with people who couldn't get the games to work properly. It wasn't my fault, your fault, or even Blitz's fault. That's simply the nature of games that have to be downloaded and installed on a specific computer. It's with some relief, then, that Flash has emerged as a more foolproof platform to release games. Any computer with Internet access can now play my creations instantly. Hell, any device with electronic components will give it a shot! My creations finally have the opportunity to creep onto your mobile phones and into your Nintendo Wii's or PSP's. Although these simple games will be a step backwards in many respects, I believe this giant step forward in accessibility is worth getting excited about. What little I make will finally have a chance to capture the public's imagination. It's been a long time since I felt that way about game development. Indeed, not since I was making 2D freeware just like this at the very beginning of my career! There's something very poetic about it. It's as though my career has come full circle and will be relived all over again in a more polished form. I made my name making 2D games, spent years in the wilderness making 3D games, and have now returned to 2D concepts... with 3D graphics to bring back to them! It seems everything really does happen for a reason, and my work is evolving in a very interesting direction indeed. Game development has finally gone back to being a hobby for me - and it might just go back to being fun too...

Clearing Away The Cobwebs ~ 21st September 2009

Observant visitors of the site will notice that its structure has changed slightly. In an effort to draw a line under the past and prepare for the future, many sections have been chopped up and changed. A divide will slowly emerge between the new games that are free to play online and the old ones that have to be installed. Meanwhile, my various writings have merged to form one concise section where the best of them can be found. Those that dealt with the past have also been passed over to the History section where they belong. The Q&A section has been replaced by one dedicated exclusively to my numerous interviews, and similarly my blog is now a section in its own right. It will serve as a kind of archive for news and developments. The Links section has also been tidied up to assist you better. There'll be lots of broken links and inconsistencies as the changes slowly sweep through my website's many pages, so please bear with me...  

Michael Jackson Tribute ~ 26th June 2009

Barely a week after marking the death of Mitsuhara Misawa, I must now pay tribute to another famous face who appeared in my games. Although I never took to Michael Jackson when I was growing up, his contribution to the work I would go on to do was immeasurable. As a creative genius, he was a classic case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. He wrote most of those many iconic songs and delivered them perfectly - whether it was in the studio, on stage, or via inventive music videos. His example convinced me that the personalized work of an individual was worth far more than the generic output of a team. That it was the artist's job to SET trends instead of following them - to express oneself instead of suppressing oneself. For better or worse, no other philosophy had a greater impact on my exploits as a maverick game designer. Michael himself was the beneficiary of that creativity when I was moved to support him with a dedicated game in 2004, which exposed the folly of the charges against him. It pre-empted the resounding "innocent" verdict that would follow in 2005, and caused the man himself to hail it as a "fabulous gesture". I think that's where Michael Jackson slots into my psyche most significantly. I've always been the crusading underdog; finding the value in something and then defending it amidst a barrage of criticism. As wrestling fans, we know all about that! No other sport needs to be defended as persistently as the theatrical business of professional wrestling. I had to do it with every game I contributed to that genre. And I continue to confront ignorance in my new role as an author and scholar. It all began with the special little soul that departed this week... 

Mitsuhara Misawa Tribute ~ 16th June 2009

Fans of my wrestling games should be moved by the untimely death of the Japanese legend Mitsuhara Misawa this weekend. Whether you realize it or not, you've probably stepped into the ring with him! He appeared in my games as "Machine Miuri" of Rising Sun Puroresu, wearing his famous green tights and throwing his trademark forearm. He and Kenta Kobashi locked horns in one of my favourite moments from the production of Wrestling MPire 2008 (pictured). On that day, the game had started to look AND play like Fire Pro and I was tremendously proud of how things were turning out. If you haven't visited the game in a while, take this opportunity to do so and ensure that a legendary wrestler lives on...

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