What a way to start off this industry week, an amazingly in
depth session with Steve Ellis, it was that in depth, we even ran out of time!
But that wasn’t a worry, we were graced with such valid and honest information
from this talented individual.
Steve kicked things off with explaining his education, which
in itself was quite surprising, taking his O and A levels at such a young age,
massively surprising, he managed to take his O levels at the age of 11! And his
A levels at the age of 13! Surprising and it isn’t something you see or hear
about every day, he also took an evening course in Programming, which required
special permission from his school, as he would be perusing external education
with people almost double his age.
Being a programmer by heart, he had to learn early on that
he would have to take different jobs, such as moderate 3D work and texture
work, but overcoming this he managed to enlist onto a computer design degree.
He was quoted as saying “Joining the Games industry is like joining the circus”
and it was pretty much frowned upon when he decided that the circus was for
him.
He also noted that he was an incredible worker, we in the
audience agreed. He managed to excel during his work placement, this much
beating a team of 4 employees and advanced to one year ahead of schedule.
Exceptional.
Steve has had a very illustrious career, and is still out
there. He joined Rare when the PS1 was readying for release. He noted that he
joined the “Dream Team”, this was related to Nintendo. It is also worth noting
that Rare had a very special relationship with Nintendo, as they were part
owned by them.
Steve has worked on many contracts, ranging from $10,000 to
around $15,000,000, the one that makes heads turn is his work on Golden Eye, he
also worked on the Split screen multiplayer version of this game, which was
also successful.
He spoke in great detail about publishers, EA, Ubisoft and Activision.
After Leaving Rare between 1998 and 1999, he devised a master plan to branch
out of rare and open up a new company vowing to be nicer to the employees, Free
radical, opened on the 4th of January, worked on a lot of big
contracts including the Star Wars contract offered to them by Lucas Arts, this
was all looking well, until the president of Lucas Arts was fired, his
relationship with them went from amazing to rock bottom when they tried several
times to offload this project and others that the company had on the books.
Ubisoft was said to have reacted angrily to FRs decision to accept this
contract.
Free Radical were also credited with the first European title
to release alongside the PlayStation 2, although I believe that this was down
to pure luck, because they worked on Time Splitters without knowing the
capabilities of the PlayStation or what was going to be in the PlayStation,
because of the progress they made on this title, they were graced with not 1
but two PlayStation dev. Kits.
Steve spoke passionately about this, and in a lot of detail
that we really wouldn’t have been given by anyone in a similar position, I feel
that both myself and the audience benefitted from his presence upon the stage
today.
Sadly, we didn’t hear all of his story, this was because it
was too long! We ran over by about 15-20 minutes, but we picked up on a subject
that was brought up many times last year, Haze was again criticized. There was
so much missed out, but I would like to keep this blog readable!
Thanks for Reading
By Nick Mason, Level 3
Games Student
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