Steve begins his lecture by telling us how the industry
works and his background on working in the gaming industry, he told us that he
started programming from an early age, "eight years old" he said was
the age he started, the skills he had at such a young age soon escalated and it
wasn't so long after he was in primary school he joined a bunch of thirty year
olds at a programming class. Steve also told us that he had worked in many
positions and some he liked others not so much. Steve explained how stressful
and time consuming the industry is, he had once worked for Rare where he did
work on the James Bond Golden Eye game, he said "I liked the idea of
working on a FPS but I didn't like James Bond" his team that he was in
worked on the split-screen multiplayer side of the game which I find to be one
of the best features of the game, but soon after that was over with the company
started work on Perfect Dark.
While working on Perfect Dark Steve said that he has had enough of Rare with them being so strict about everything he decided to create his own company in secret, with a couple of his friends that had also had enough of Rare they would meet at his friends house and there they would plan their own little success... TimeSplinters. Not soon after taking the money they all earned from Perfect Dark they funded their own company called Free Radical Design.
From then on Steve and his friends had started their company
costing them 50k, they had to find a place to work (base of operations) that
was big enough for seven people and then having to learn about legal issues for
just encase anything happened. His first game for this company sounded really
complicated (I didn't hear the name of this game so for that I am sorry),
something about time and time travel to then having to go forward and then back
in time to do.... I don't know he lost me after that, but it was basically
something about time. He then started work on a game that he first called MPG,
but we know it now as TimeSplinters, at
this point Steve had to hire more people and for more people he needed a bigger
office, so after that was all sorted out E3 had come around and TimeSplinters
was going to be there, but there were some unhappy faces on the Free Radical
Design team as their beloved game had been put at the back where hardly anyone
could see it, he said that it got a good press review so at least there were a
few smiles. Steve and the team felt like a real company after TimeSplinters was
released, it had sold over 1 million copy's and won a couple of Bafta awards,
after that they made TimeSplinters 2 which was also a big success.
Now it starts to go downhill as his company start to have a
lot of problems with legal issues and getting bullied by companies and having
to change contracts, apparently IDOS are not a good company to sign with
according to Steve because they didn't care about what his company was doing,
they then signed with EA which was another mistake because they didn't care
about his company or games, fighting through moral drops and false hope,
publishers can sometimes be your worst enemy. Then Codemasters came along, like
a dashing knight here to save them from their immanent doom, Codemasters really
helped them release their games smoothly.
As it came into the next generation of consoles Steve said
that there was a sudden craze for developers to make a WWII FPS game which was
the direction Steve did not want to take, but he did still want to make an FPS
game...
After a while Free Radical Games had signed on with Ubisoft
and Lucas Arts, while his team were working on a game for Ubisoft (HAZE) Lucas
Arts wanted them to help make the new Star Wars Battlefront 3, so it ended up
with them putting back HAZE and started working on Battlefront 3, Ubisoft were
not happy with this and were not sure if they could trust Steve to for fill his
contract and release HAZE. Battlefront 3 was soon scrapped and then HAZE just
ended up being a mess of a game since they just wanted it over and done with.
Soon after Free Radical Games went into administration and resulted in 200
people losing their jobs. In the end CRYTEK saved his company but now Steve
wanted out and have a break from the industry. Eventually he became bored and
looked into IOS games and eventually he setup a new company that he now works
for called Crash Lab.
By Ben North, Level 3 Gaming student
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