Nickname: None

Irrational Title: Producer, Project Manager

Qualifications: I have been in the games industry since about 1986, I started writing games for the 8 bit machines. I was a bedroom programmer. Remember the old Acorn machine? I did games for those. Then I starting doing 16-bit stuff for the Amiga, I never got very far with that. Then I went to university and did a degree in Computer Science and Electronic Engineering. Then after that I spent a few years doing a PhD and then went back into the industry and worked at Reflections in England. I was one of the programmers on Driver for the Playstation. Then I became the Lead Programmer on Driver 2, I left halfway through that project to come to Australia, to work at Micro Forte. That is when I became a producer when I joined at Micro Forte working in Canberra in 2000. I was producer on Fallout Tactics and then left there a couple of years ago to come here [Irrational]. I moved out from the UK at the end of 99.

You got your start writing your own games?
I actually did an apprenticeship as a Clock maker, restoring antique clocks, which I was quite good at - I am an efficient engineer. I went to technical college to learn about computing because at the time the IT industry was taking off. I learnt programming and found that it was something I was naturally good at. Of course there was no way for me to apply that in my own time, the only thing that I could do was to write games. At the time I wasn't particularly interested in games, I was more interested in programming and the technology. There were a couple of games that I played at the time, which I really enjoyed, arcade adventure and platform style games that I was really into. I could see how I could code those using my skills, so I began to code in my own time.

Previous games worked on: Fallout Tactics, Driver, Driver 2

Taking a well deserved rest

Hardest moment in development of any game you have worked on: The hardest thing probably so far in my career has been working on getting Driver finished. For the last 6 months of that project we were doing really long hours. I had just got married at that point and for the first 6 months of my married life I didn't see my wife very much, that was just horrible.

First Gaming system: 8-bit Acorn machines with a 6502 processor

Earliest gaming memories: : Playing text adventures. The first games I really got into were text adventures. Actually my earliest memory would be Space Invaders at the bus stations, then later Atari Tank commander.

Favourite game of all time and why: I used to play Tetris an awful lot, I haven't played Tetris for a long time now. Stupid answer but probably FreeCell or Spider, I keep coming back to these games.

Games currently playing: I have recently been playing Max Payne 2 a lot, I play a lot of games on the gameboy advance. I'm playing Final Fantasy Tactics at the moment. As well as Super Monkey Ball, they are great games and I play them a lot. I am also playing Call of Duty.

Home PC rig: 2.8ghz P4, 512mb of ram, Radeon 9600

Console or PC?: I tend to play Gameboy Advance games a lot because it is really easy, I can just play it anywhere. I have just been to England and I played it a lot when I went, obviously on the flight it was very convenient to play it. I probably play PC and console game equally. I am not a huge gamer, PC is easier for me I can sit down and play, console I have to get the pad out and there is usually someone watching television. I haven't bought any console games for a while there are few that I am interested in.

Single player or multi-player or co-op: Single player. I don't like going online with people and getting my butt kicked. I don't mind the AI beating me but I don't like getting my butt kicked by other people!

Did you ever jump on a Tribes server?
Yes we all did on occasions. I just am just so hopeless, I play tribes completely vicariously. Michael [Johnston] and Ed [Orman], I sit and watch them playing in spectator mode. I can always tell how much fun they are having by the whoops from the design pit. They normally play at least once a week.

There is a set time they play?
We normally have one afternoon a week where they play games, they might play tribes or other games. There are a whole variety of games that they play. They play our game [T:V] when ever they want, when ever there is a new build out I encourage everyone to play it, I think it's really important for the whole team to play it, so that everyone at work knows the game and get some feedback from everybody at work, some people may not like it and it's important we get all comment.

Is deadline pressure that severe that you can't push it back a month or something like that?
Quiet often the publishers has a release date set which they want the project to go out before. If you are really lucky and work for someone like Blizzard or Ensemble you can pretty much dictate when you are going to ship and they will give you a bit of extra rope. If you are affiliated to Microsoft or you are a big company you can dictate when you are going to ship but for most smaller developers the publisher has a particular quarter when they want the project to ship and you have to ship by then. My job here really is to make sure that the project is finished on time and to the required quality. I make sure that in the scope of the project with the resources we have available, the budget is suitable for getting the project out on time and that we don't have to crunch ridiculously hard. It doesn't benefit anybody doing a long, hard sustained crunch really, the project is compromised and the game goes out full of bugs.

How do the publishers penalise you if you go over time?
Normally they won't pay you any extra money. Then you are working for free, which is very hard. All you are eating into your royalty advance. There are various other ways they can penalise you.

"The lost" is being developed by Irrational in Boston. It is also being developed on the unreal engine. Is there anyone that has worked on both projects?
We share a code base between the projects now, we have a shared code repository, and part of the engine is shared between to two studios. We don't share anything with the Playstation2 though. Unreal on the Playstation2 is quiet a lot different from for the PC version.

How did Irrational become the developer for Tribes: Vengeance?
Toward the end of Freedom Force Sierra approached Irrational and said they wanted to do some more work with the Tribes franchise and would we be interested in doing it. So we put together a pitch for them, which then turned into the prototype. We did a single player prototype, which is 2 levels, they were interested in this idea of story telling in the game and how we could tell a story in the Tribes universe using our narrative skill. Two years ago we started the project, I have been with this company slightly less then 2 years now and I came in at the beginning of the prototype. The Freedom Force team had just finished so there was a spare team in Canberra, so it was easiest to do it in Canberra.

What is the relationship in regards to Tribes: Vengeance between Boston and Canberra? Most of the game is being developed here, though, I understand some of the sound is done in Boston.
Yes, all the sound is being done by our sound engineer is in Boston. Ken Levine is writing all the dialogue for the game in Boston, he wrote the story. We share a bit of technology between the studios, the vast majority of the Tribes game is produced in Canberra, certainly all the art and level design.

There were some posts on Tribalwar by Thrax about advertising in games. Particularly within the game itself, with a first person shooter once the game is released there is no revenue stream from the game and it may be even costing money to patch. Is this something that you think is going to become more prevalent in the industry?
I don't know. Currently none of the big companies can see the benefit of advertising in games. It is very difficult for us to even persuade us to even let us use their logos in a game free of charge, quite often they want us to pay them to use their logos, they can't see any benefit in it. That may very well change, certainly product placement in movies is huge business. One would think that it would be a natural progression into games but it isn't happening at the moment. We looked at it for this game [T:V], a lot of our multiplayer games are set in stadiums and we have billboards around where people could put adverts if we could sell the space. I don't mind, I don't think that we are compromising our artistic integrity in way.

The idea behind it is purely a revenue maker for the game after it is released?
I think the problem is when your advertisers start taking content, that's when the problems start. I have never worked on a game like that but I have known people that have worked on games for big companies and the company has said we want the game to play this particular way we don't want the game to do this because it would upset our corporate image. The same way as product placement can get in the way of and spoil movies it is very easy to spoil a game. I know of games that where the game designs were completely changed because the corporate sponsor didn't like the way the game played, it was too violent or they thought it gave a negative image to their product. Car manufacturers often will only allow their cars to be used in a game if they are never damaged, they think that that would be a negative image. They considered that it was worse for them to not have their cars in than to have them smashed. You can licence the cars but you can't smash them up, who wants to see a car game where you can't smash your cars up?

Was there any projects you put aside to do Tribes: Vengeance, you mention before that the Freedom Force team had finished?
No they had pretty much finished.

Is the same art team working on Tribes: Vengeance and the Freedom Force?
Yes all the Freedom Force team eventually went over to Tribes. Some have gone back to Freedom Force now.

Prototyping the game, how hard was the decision to pick up the game.
How do you mean?

Tribes:Vengeance has a large profile and a lot of community interest, what was that like? What is it like now with pressure from the community? Do you guys feel it?
You need to speak to Michael Johnston, he does most of the community liaison. He would probably have a slightly different take on it than me. Talk to Ed [Orman] about it too. Fans of the original games always have interesting opinions but we can't always take their views on board. They remember what the game was like when they first saw it, so they are looking for that same buzz. But they don't understand that the industry has moved on. Even if we made exactly the same game as Tribes but with new graphics they probably wouldn't like it.

I think that has been demonstrated by Unreal Tournament 2003, that game was not as popular (it seems) as the original. It was the same thing, but it looked better.
I think what we have tried to do and we are quite genuine about this, is to pick up on what it was that made tribes great. Pick up on those core strengths, keep those and build on them rather than going off and doing what we want to do. Which I think is certainly what happened with Tribes2, they didn't really stay true to the original. I don't want to get into this anyway.

We are not going to argue about it *laughs*.
Certainly a lot of games you see anyway, quite apart from Tribes. They do a sequel to it and the people that do the sequel don't understand what it was that made the first game popular and go off in a completely different direction. We have tried not to do that we have put a lot of effort into it but at the same time you have to push it in a slightly different direction, you just have to.

Thanks for your time Tony.