0:00

Coming up on this week's show a

0:02

gaming legends lost work has been preserved

0:05

Atari returns to the arcade and

0:07

we chat origin systems Star Wars

0:10

and her interactive with Sherry grain

0:12

array And

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the retro hour podcast is brought to you each

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and every Friday with our wonderful mates a bitmap

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books now You've got to check out their current

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volume 1064

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a visual compendium Celebrating

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a bitmap books calm Hello

0:46

and welcome to the retro our podcast

0:48

episode number 421

0:50

your weekly dose of retro gaming and technology

0:52

news with me Dan would me ravia Abbott

0:54

and me Joe Fox and a very warm

0:56

welcome to the show Of course a podcast

0:58

that every single week brings you up to

1:00

speed on what's been happening in the wonderful

1:02

world of retro gaming And technology and of

1:05

course bringing you a very special guest in

1:07

the second half of the podcast to tell

1:09

us their Story from

1:11

working in the video games industry now I've got to

1:13

say now having done this podcast now for over eight

1:15

years If you look back on

1:17

our list of guests that we've had I'm not just

1:19

saying we know we do try and keep it quite

1:21

Diverse and get different people on from different parts of

1:23

the world that have done different things in the industry

1:25

one problem We've probably always had though is trying

1:28

to get more women on the show because you look

1:30

back particularly the eras that we cover on The podcast

1:32

like you know 70s 80s 90s It

1:35

wasn't that much of a diverse industry about

1:37

them was it was very male orientated. Yeah,

1:40

and there's some Absolutely amazing

1:42

female developers out there and

1:44

you know, we really fit

1:46

gaming's for everyone and Inclusiveness

1:48

is a great part of video games Yeah,

1:51

so today we're gonna be joined by and

1:53

probably one of the most famous women who's

1:55

worked in the video games industry for many

1:57

Decades now and that worked for some huge

2:00

companies as well. I mean just listing off a

2:02

few of the companies she's worked for. Origin Systems,

2:05

LucasArts, the Cartoon Network, American

2:07

Laser Games, who you might

2:09

remember American Laser Games for

2:11

those games that were everywhere

2:14

in the arcades back in the early

2:16

90s like Mad Dog McCree. Oh those

2:18

FMV games yeah I absolutely love them.

2:21

And then Sherry went on to work for Her

2:23

Interactive. Now they're quite a unique company

2:25

because really the mission of Her Interactive

2:27

they were a spin-off of American Laser

2:30

Games. Specifically devoted to making

2:32

games that were targeted towards females. Yeah

2:34

and they did some great games like

2:37

Mackenzie and Co was a dating game

2:39

as well which started out

2:41

but then later on they got the Nancy

2:43

Drew series which was incredibly popular.

2:45

And you know we cover

2:48

a lot of the history of Sherry's career but

2:50

also we talk about you know some of the

2:52

books that she's wrote about gender

2:55

inclusiveness and about MMOs as well

2:57

and how that world's kind of

2:59

opened up gaming to a lot

3:01

of people. Yeah and she's worked

3:04

with you know some legends of the industry as

3:06

well and some huge franchises. Star Wars she worked

3:08

on as well Star Wars. Ultima. Yeah

3:10

well the Ultima games back when she was at

3:12

Origin Systems. And like you said she's a really

3:14

big advocate for you know women in gaming both

3:16

as industry professionals and players as well. And

3:19

you know something like that she still campaigns

3:21

for to this day. So a really interesting

3:23

chat with our very special guest Sherry Gray-Narese.

3:25

She's coming up on the podcast in around

3:27

half an hour from now. But

3:29

of course you know the way the podcast works first half

3:31

of it that's when we have a little natter about

3:34

what's been happening in the world of retro gaming from over

3:36

the last week. And this

3:38

was very nice to see now. I did mention you

3:40

know talking about our guest

3:42

list that we've had on the podcast over the years. One of

3:44

my favorite interviews that we ever did and someone

3:47

who's just an absolute legend who very sadly

3:49

passed away a couple of years

3:52

ago was Archie McLean. Now I

3:54

remember flying his games like you know Jimmy White's

3:56

World Wind Snooker and to this day you know Archie

3:58

McLean's Pool on the Amiga. one of

4:00

my favourite pool simulators. And that was kind of

4:02

jaw-dropping when I saw that game as

4:04

a kid, you know, those kind of 3D graphics,

4:07

just incredible games. And we met Artur, I

4:09

think it was Play Expo in London when

4:11

we interviewed him live, wasn't it? Yeah,

4:14

and you know, he worked on

4:16

these games, but he also had some

4:18

absolutely fantastic stories about the kind of

4:20

background these games had, you know, especially

4:22

Jimmy White's as well, and just kind

4:24

of some great tales about what was

4:26

going on. And, you know, he was

4:28

an avid collector as well. He had

4:30

an absolutely huge watch

4:32

collection. Yeah, I remember that because

4:34

we did a panel with him,

4:37

and he was kind of shown as well the pictures of

4:39

his watch collection, wasn't he? For about 15 minutes before we

4:41

started the panel, we're like, we'll probably need a crack on

4:43

now, but he was that passionate about watches, which

4:46

was really interesting. And of course, you

4:48

know, International Karate, legendary game back in

4:50

the day. But this is quite nice

4:52

to see that, obviously, Artur passed away

4:54

a couple of years ago. But it

4:56

turns out some of his arcade experiments

4:58

have been preserved by the

5:01

website Games That Weren't. Yeah,

5:03

so he was, he actually had quite a

5:05

few ports in the works, well, I'd say

5:07

in the works from the 80s. Yeah. That

5:09

never came to be for the Atari 400

5:12

and the Atari 800. So

5:14

there was some graphical tests for

5:17

Donkey Kong and Tempest, as

5:19

well as a

5:21

pole position clone, which he'd made

5:23

as well called Road Roller, which

5:26

have been preserved. But the main one

5:29

that people are talking about is

5:31

actually a game that was actually covered in Zap64 magazine

5:33

back in the day. It

5:36

never actually came out, which is a port of Robotron.

5:40

And there's a whole video, you know, kind of like

5:42

with a deep dive into all the assets of the

5:44

games and stuff like that. And

5:46

I was watching the Robotron version of it earlier

5:48

on. And yeah, it looks nice and colorful. And

5:50

it's got all the sprites, hasn't it? Yeah, it's

5:53

got all the sprites. Yeah, it's got all the

5:55

sprites and everything. And it's a pretty far on

5:57

version of it, if you will. But

5:59

yeah. Yeah, it's funny because obviously

6:01

I've never really been interested in the Atari

6:03

400 and 800 but I just keep

6:06

seeing it everywhere and I know this is obviously from

6:08

40 years ago when

6:10

obviously he's passed away now

6:13

and everything but it's nice to see people

6:15

are still kind of going through it and preserving

6:18

these old games that could have been.

6:20

I guess this is what developers do

6:22

and they want to explore a new

6:24

system. They might

6:26

just port something that they already

6:28

know or one of their own

6:30

titles or change something

6:32

to kind of learn how it

6:35

works and learn

6:37

that environment basically. It's

6:39

great to see as well because these are

6:41

five and a quarter inch floppies and I

6:43

love actually some images of them, these handwritten

6:45

labels dating from 1983 on there too

6:47

and it's great

6:50

that number one these discs don't work after all

6:52

these years but also that he kept them for

6:55

that long as well because there's got to be

6:57

so many of these kind of stories and you

6:59

always hear about legendary developers like Archer who might

7:01

pass away and you always kind of wonder is

7:04

there anything less in their attic, stuff they

7:06

were working on so I think

7:08

it is nice to see that his efforts

7:11

have been preserved. I think that's a

7:13

great point that they're still working and

7:15

it's kind of like get them preserved

7:18

now before they go.

7:21

Yeah, obviously someone who's famous and well

7:24

regarded as Archer, it is very nice to

7:26

see that his works have been preserved now

7:28

and actually you can download

7:30

them so if you fancy poking around and

7:32

looking at the abandoned workings of a coding

7:34

genius, as that extension nicely worded,

7:37

I'll link that up in this week's show

7:39

notes as well. Now this

7:41

is very cool, we're seeing a lot of these retro

7:44

style 3D games coming

7:46

out recently. We mentioned that one that was inspired

7:48

by Desert Strike the

7:51

other week on the podcast which was nice to see,

7:53

getting some love on our Twitter actually the other day

7:55

as well, a few people have discovered it through the

7:57

podcast and this one looks incredible. This is a new

7:59

year. Sega Saturn style

8:02

parking garage racer game. Now, how much

8:05

fun does this look? This looks like

8:07

absolute hell to me. I hate parking

8:09

multi-stirring car parks and tight spaces, but

8:12

I'm well impressed with the graphics and

8:14

stuff. And yeah, and to be honest,

8:16

these ones look a lot more fun

8:19

than the council ones that I have

8:21

to go around and drive in. Well,

8:23

it's funny you should say that, Ravi,

8:25

because I just think the premise of

8:28

this game is so

8:30

typically British. But

8:33

yeah, parking garage rally circuit, it's

8:35

called. The guys behind it

8:37

are actually from LA. Maybe

8:39

the parking garages are much cooler in

8:41

America. Like cars are really not cool.

8:44

Well, yeah, I mean, it's funny you should say

8:47

that. So the premise of the game is

8:49

described. It is meant to feel like

8:51

an unreleased Sega Saturn game from 1998.

8:55

That's how it's meant to feel. That's how it's meant

8:57

to look. And they've got the look down.

9:00

Yeah, they've got it down to a two. Certainly got

9:02

the look down. And then the premise of the game

9:05

is you can travel across the

9:07

US and also

9:09

the UK picking which

9:12

parking garages you want to race around.

9:15

So you can go to UK

9:17

ones, apparently. Free with peace melon,

9:19

yes. But

9:22

I totally agree with you, Ravi. I

9:24

can't stand parking in the big concrete

9:26

multi stories either. But yeah,

9:28

it's just funny because it's very in the

9:30

vein of like Colin McRae rally. Yeah,

9:33

like it's you know, tell you like sharp

9:35

left here kind of thing. And you know,

9:37

you've got your checkpoints and everything. But it's

9:40

all set around one of these big concrete

9:42

circular parking multi

9:44

stories. It's just such a

9:47

bizarre premise. It

9:49

feels really tight, like. So,

9:52

you know, the camera is really

9:54

close up to the car. Yeah,

9:56

it's very much zoomed in further

9:59

than of a race. racing games where you're quite

10:01

zoomed out. And I guess that's because you're in

10:03

the limited narrow space.

10:05

Yeah, but it does work well because

10:08

that's like a nostalgic kind of camera

10:10

angle as well. Reminds me of Sega Rally on the

10:12

Saturn. Sega Rally. Words right out on

10:15

my mouth. I was literally about to say Sega Rally.

10:17

And that is the whole the whole point

10:19

of it. It's meant to be, you know,

10:21

one of these rally driving simulators. But

10:23

rather than going around kind of like,

10:25

you know, farmlands, you know, that tight

10:28

tracks. The idea is it's meant to

10:30

be these really, really tight, horrible corners that you

10:32

get in parking garages. And then the idea is

10:34

you're meant to drift around them and

10:37

get your boosts and obviously beat the high

10:39

score, beat the times on them and stuff and

10:41

kind of make your way either down or up

10:44

the multi story, which just seems like it

10:47

seems like such a stupid, boring premise.

10:49

But they've made the game. It does

10:51

look really fast and exciting. And

10:53

I'm not a big fan of racing games.

10:55

But I'm like, yeah, I'd quite like to

10:57

play this. But also, this could be a

10:59

game made back then because of the limitations

11:01

of the graphics like, you know, you're

11:04

not really doing much graphically there. You haven't

11:06

got these huge mountains in the background. You

11:08

haven't got all of this. You've got, you

11:11

know, a scene and

11:13

you've got walls and then kind of.

11:15

Oh, yeah. Yeah. So

11:17

that like limited graphic style is

11:20

something they've recreated. And

11:22

being on modern systems, they could probably

11:24

have just gone all out. But that's

11:27

nostalgic in its own way. Yeah, no,

11:29

you've captured it straight away there. You

11:31

know, the backgrounds of the games

11:33

as you're coming down the multi story. You know, it's

11:36

it's the kind of like the old

11:38

pixelated photos that you get in the

11:40

back of like second one on a

11:42

PlayStation game. But, you know, they really

11:44

have captured that static image just like

11:46

across the horizon. I love it. If

11:49

you drive. Yeah. It's like, yeah,

11:52

you drive to the end, you get to the bar and it's

11:54

like you got your ticket and then you have to run out

11:57

and go. Can

12:00

I get a new ticket printed please? Yeah, well,

12:02

there's a queue of cars behind you beeping the

12:04

horn angrily. Yeah Well,

12:07

unfortunately no signs of it coming out on console or

12:09

Sega Saturn at the moment is going to be on

12:11

Steam Yeah, but you never know

12:13

with these things if they pop you enough They do

12:15

get ported to you know, switch and PlayStation and stuff.

12:17

But seeing this on the Saturn would be fantastic Yeah,

12:20

definitely. It's got no release date or pricing as

12:22

yet I mean these games, you know, generally not

12:25

all that expensive are they normally around the ten

12:27

pound kind of mark? So hopefully it will be

12:29

that and but you can wishlist that on Steam

12:31

now looks loads of fun Now this

12:33

is quite an interesting story for those of

12:35

us who like to play our retro games

12:37

on a proper Casso'd Ray

12:39

tube television, which I think is it's all

12:42

of us guys now Isn't it a no

12:44

joke into the CRT craze again a couple

12:46

of years ago? Yeah. Yeah, I've got I've

12:48

actually got two CRTs Doing

12:52

well, I know I know fancy. I

12:54

mean they were given to me Yeah

12:58

There is something about playing games on the original

13:00

screens that they were designed for which you know

13:02

When you've got the original consoles hooking them up,

13:04

but that's an easy job But when

13:06

you get into the realms of devices like

13:08

the mister It can be a

13:10

little bit trickier to get them working on retro

13:13

machines. But this is quite interesting This is a

13:15

a new project called mr. Cast

13:18

that lets you mirror your PC

13:20

screen to a classic CRT

13:23

TV Yeah, so

13:25

this is Interesting because

13:27

it's basically enabling the mister to do

13:29

that So you could you could do

13:31

this if you had like a HDMI

13:34

AV converter and a Chromecast with loads

13:37

of latency. Yeah, but that's what I

13:39

was about to say Yeah, you could

13:41

do that and it would be naggy.

13:43

You could play videos on their classic

13:45

stuff and You know, they

13:47

showed the the demo of this and they have

13:49

sliders on it straight away, which I was like

13:51

Yes, that's a classic 90s

13:53

sci-fi show but What

13:56

this does is this enables the mister itself

14:01

to receive the PC screen

14:04

and then have that connected to

14:06

your CRT. Now, it

14:09

works by a special core

14:13

that runs on there, which is like

14:15

an analog GPU core. You were asking

14:17

me about this earlier, weren't you? You

14:19

had a groovy mister. Yes,

14:21

so groovy MAME is

14:23

basically a fork of MAME that

14:26

focuses on CRT monitor support,

14:29

and that would run like on

14:32

your PC, transfer

14:34

the data to your

14:36

mister, and then

14:38

that core runs on your

14:40

mister connected to the CRT TV. So

14:44

it's basically like your mister's acting

14:46

as a mega fast Chromecast

14:50

without the lag, but now you can send

14:52

your whole PC screen. So you can have

14:54

titles that aren't available

14:57

natively on the mister core,

14:59

you know, latest PC games,

15:01

and you can place stuff off your

15:03

Steam library, then essentially. Steam library, any

15:06

other emulators or platforms that you've got

15:08

running on your PC, send

15:10

that straight to the mister. Mister

15:13

has the input, so

15:17

there's hardly any latency, and then have

15:19

that BAM straight onto your CRT TV.

15:22

So it's essentially like

15:25

a good thing for people who have misters in

15:27

a way to upgrade it and, you know, add

15:29

more functionality to it. I

15:32

like the fact as well that you can basically send so pretty

15:34

much anything you're looking at on your PC

15:36

desktop, you just mirror that to CRT.

15:39

Yeah, that's what I think, yeah. I've

15:41

actually set up a Chromecast on a CRT before

15:44

using an HDMI to

15:46

analog converter, and

15:49

I was streaming, like, an old episode to GamesMaster

15:52

from my phone to the Chromecast watching it on

15:54

a CRT, which, to me, it was quite

15:57

a nostalgic experience kind of watching a TV show that

15:59

I've been watching. I used to watch on the CRT back

16:01

in the day actually on one again. So

16:03

that was quite nice to see. Well something like Sonic

16:05

Mania. Yeah. You know blasting

16:07

that that would be absolutely perfect and

16:09

you know I guess there's gonna it's

16:12

it's an early version there's a few bugs and stuff

16:14

and it's gonna be relying on your

16:17

internet connection and how

16:19

your wireless is and you

16:21

know if if you actually

16:23

have all the the correct stuff in there

16:25

but it's a really cool little concept. Yeah

16:28

and the only thing I'm thinking is obviously a lot

16:30

of games today are made for widescreens. I guess probably

16:32

they'll be letterboxed on a 4x3. Yeah

16:35

you have to play around with the setting

16:37

wouldn't you and get the right native resolution.

16:40

Yeah but very cool to see I mean you know how many games do we

16:42

see these days that have got you know inbuilt like

16:44

CRT filters and all that in there in

16:46

the settings actually having it on the proper

16:48

old-school display I think is very

16:50

cool. You mentioned Sonic Mania though because that is a

16:52

game that does require really fast

16:55

reflexes so it would be interesting to

16:57

see that would be a good example of something like that.

17:01

Yeah to see if I'm even worse than I normally

17:03

am on Cuphead playing at the CRT. Yeah

17:06

very cool if you have got a mister that is available

17:08

now on github something set up in the show notes as

17:10

well. Now speaking of games that

17:12

needed a CRT back in the day probably

17:15

the most famous light gun game of all time.

17:17

You guys fans of Duck Hunt did you buy

17:19

that much back in the day? Absolutely

17:21

loved it yeah you go ahead

17:23

Joe. Yeah I

17:25

played it. Thanks

17:28

for your input. But yeah obviously

17:30

very famous game that required a light

17:32

gun on the NES. Yeah my friend

17:34

had one we just absolutely batter it

17:36

like Duck Hunt was one of the

17:38

things that we play as little kids

17:41

just constantly absolutely loved

17:43

it and of course you could cheat by

17:45

running straight up to the screen. I

17:48

was about to say that. Yeah we never allowed that.

17:50

That's what we did. Yeah I never knew this what

17:52

could he do? You could just hold the gun up

17:54

really close to the TV. Tell

17:57

me. Press it. And just press it

17:59

in you. You'd pretty much never miss. My wife

18:01

caught me doing it a few years ago

18:03

at the Nottingham Video Game Museum. You know,

18:05

the one that moved to Sheffield. Yeah. They

18:07

had duck hunts set up on the top

18:10

floor and I was playing it for

18:12

ages and, you know, got right up to

18:14

like the last levels and I was struggling with it. So she

18:16

caught me just like stood right up to the TV and she

18:18

was like, what are you doing? I was like, nothing. And

18:22

you need one of those, though. Fairly big,

18:24

fairly big CRTs to play as well.

18:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously incredible game if

18:28

you're into those light gun zapper games

18:31

of the 80s. But actually, there is

18:33

a very respectable port

18:35

of this, obviously unofficial.

18:38

So we can then draw attention to this

18:40

from anyone at Nintendo. But now this has

18:43

been ported and enhanced remake of

18:45

Duck Hunt has come to the Amiga. Have

18:47

you ever used the light gun on the Amiga, Dan?

18:51

No, I think I've told the story before on the

18:53

podcast of when I first got my

18:55

Amiga 500 because I had a

18:57

problem with my A500. The

19:00

screen used to like scramble. I think there's a problem with

19:02

the chip RAM or something in it. So we returned it

19:04

to Dixon's and got like a new machine,

19:06

like basically to swap it over. But when I was in

19:08

there, my mom was filling in the paperwork and everything. The

19:10

guy that worked at Dixon's, he came up to me and

19:13

goes, oh, you want to light gun for your Amiga? And

19:15

I remember thinking at the time he's going to give me one for free. Yeah,

19:18

yeah. Been 11 years old and be like, wow, like that.

19:20

And he goes, yeah, tell your mom, they're only like forty

19:22

nine pounds. I was like, it's never going to happen then.

19:24

But, you know, that was the closest I ever came to

19:26

actually see. I think the one called the Trojan Phaser. Trojan

19:30

did this light light pen as well, which is

19:33

one kind of thing as well. And I look

19:35

like pens. I've never owned one. But it was

19:37

the same people that made that. And it worked

19:39

for the ST as well. And I

19:41

remember there was quite a few light gun games for

19:43

the Amiga actually. But I never had one. So I

19:45

was always playing it with the mouse.

19:47

But this does look

19:50

like a very, very accurate port. Yeah.

19:52

Well, this is you mentioned about playing it with the mouse. That

19:55

is how this version of the game is

19:57

controlled. So it's not actually a light gun

19:59

game. I use a mouse to aim

20:01

the the site on the screen, but

20:04

it looks very good doesn't it? I think graphically they've

20:06

done some nice enhancements there, you know, but the shading

20:08

on it is very nice The sound effects are great

20:10

as well as actually I think it is the the

20:12

shotgun sound from doom Yeah,

20:15

I think they've they've they've done

20:17

the kind of reduct really well, you know,

20:19

obviously it's not the original NAS version

20:22

It's like enhanced but it

20:24

does look really good. I

20:27

think it does look really nice Obviously,

20:29

it's not just running on

20:31

an a500 There's quite a few

20:34

things going on in there, which obviously I'll

20:36

be on me because I'm not a meek guy But

20:38

I think the look of it, you know if you were to

20:40

just show me this I would say it was like a HD

20:43

version for the switch like straight away I felt

20:45

much really? Yeah. Yeah, I think it looks really

20:47

smooth and really nice It's just

20:49

the only thing that gives it away is obviously is

20:51

the fact that it's not like when it is just a

20:54

mouse You know with a crosshair kind of

20:56

going around on the screen But yeah, you were

20:58

you definitely right about the doom sound effect there

21:00

Dan. I think it's wicked I think if you're

21:02

playing it with a light gun on something It's

21:04

gonna be the accuracy of how you actually play

21:06

in it. That's that's gonna give you

21:08

the real feel of yeah I mean, you

21:10

know, which apparently yeah, this doesn't support

21:12

light guns from what I can see natively But

21:15

I've I've never used a light gun on the

21:17

Amiga. How did they kind of work then? Was

21:19

it you had to have games that were specifically

21:21

made for it or could the light gun basically

21:23

I think so I I just remember Quite

21:26

a few games having that option in

21:28

there, but maybe they never had Support

21:31

for it. They might have just kind of

21:33

been, you know mouth shooting ones. There was a lot of

21:35

that back in the days Yeah I

21:37

mean if it could emulate a mouse and yeah would be

21:39

possible to play this with a light gun I imagine which

21:41

will be the most authentic way of playing it But

21:44

yeah looks really good actually and I think you

21:46

need about two megabytes of RAM to run this

21:48

option is slightly expanded Amiga 500 if you want

21:50

to run this game But it's not really a

21:52

problem for most people these days or if you

21:54

can play on the a 500 mini or emulation

21:57

So that looks very good. And they're like all things are

22:00

those IP I would grab that while you

22:02

can. Now there's

22:04

one more story to talk about before

22:06

we hop into our special guest this

22:08

week Sherry Graynare talking about Origin Systems

22:10

Star Wars lots more as well. Now

22:12

Atari obviously have been doing some really

22:14

incredible things recently but if you think

22:16

of Atari's legacy it is really in

22:18

the arcade isn't it? And it turns out that

22:20

Atari have actually been away from the the arcade for 25

22:22

years but

22:25

that is going to change

22:27

soon. Yeah 25 years it sounds like

22:29

so long but also like yes that

22:31

would make sense because obviously arcades kind

22:33

of died in the late 90s early

22:35

2000s with the advancement of home consoles

22:37

etc and it

22:39

does feel like every week we're talking about Atari

22:42

and how they kind of like knocking it out

22:44

of the park at the moment. Yeah but yeah

22:46

they're partnering up with a company called Alan One

22:48

Inc which Ravi Fort was just

22:50

a person called Alan One but they are a

22:53

company and they're named after Tron. But

22:56

they're going to be bringing Atari's

22:58

recharge series to

23:00

arcades so the recharge series was about

23:02

three or four years ago where they

23:05

did some kind of like HD remasters

23:07

of some classic Atari games like

23:10

missile command, yar's revenge, centipede,

23:13

kind of really nice glowy

23:17

neon kind of versions of those games. Yeah

23:19

the beautiful look I've got the asteroid one

23:22

on the switch. Yeah they're on Switch and

23:24

Steam and PlayStation, Xbox etc and

23:27

they've been out a few years but they're going to be bringing them

23:29

to arcades in

23:31

full-size arcade cabinets apparently and Atari are

23:33

saying that you know they're going to

23:35

try and put them in like you

23:38

know really kind of

23:40

enriching they've described it

23:42

as enriching location based

23:44

arcade experience. So

23:46

I'm guessing they're kind of kind of I don't

23:48

really know what that means but I'm guessing they're

23:51

going to try and put it in some

23:53

of these like arcades that have popped up around the world

23:55

you know where you kind of pay 20 quid and you

23:57

get to go in all day. Yeah okay I love that

23:59

kind of thing. Yeah, like arcade club and stuff

24:01

like that because if I noticed, you know in Japan,

24:03

there's quite a lot of them still Oh

24:05

in pubs it could be you know, that's something that's

24:07

a fancy word in And

24:12

the kind of pods I go in this wouldn't last long

24:14

in there Yeah, yeah get smashed up now i'll be

24:16

interested to see if they're going to make like 10 separate

24:19

machines Or if they're just going to make one machine and you

24:21

can pick Yeah what you want to play

24:23

on it and i'll also be interested to see

24:25

if this is going to be like a really Fancy,

24:29

you know Arcade cabinet that isn't going

24:31

to be on sale for like the general

24:33

public is going to be aimed for like

24:35

Premises or if it's going to be something that you could

24:37

buy for like three four hundred quid I've

24:40

done um one up arcades Yeah,

24:43

obviously, uh atari, you know, yeah,

24:45

yeah legacy ones and stuff. Maybe

24:47

they'll do a recharge series on

24:49

that as well Um, so,

24:51

you know play it outdoors and play it

24:53

at home But maybe they're just trying to

24:56

focus in on that one market as well Doing

24:59

it, you know in enriched location

25:01

based facilities Location

25:04

based facilities it's in mcdonald's Well,

25:08

they did this company alan one they um, they did

25:10

a game called avian knights Couple

25:12

of years ago and they did actually release an

25:14

i-k cabinet for that game Um,

25:16

which if you go to their website, which is uh

25:19

alan hyphen one Dot com

25:21

you can actually buy it says

25:23

you can pre-order an arcade cabinet for it on there

25:26

Uh, i'm just kind of looking through and trying to find pricing, but

25:28

I can't see it on the website at the moment That's

25:31

the things i'm looking at richton. Oh Yeah

25:36

Check the history in black. Yeah, he's looking at

25:38

Well, they did the star wars one didn't they

25:40

the pac man one for uh, why not? Yeah

25:42

Yeah, but the arcade one up ones

25:44

they're like flat pack kind of like It's

25:47

interesting to see why I like kind of If these

25:49

are going to be aimed that that's what i'm kind

25:51

of trying to figure out here Whether this is going

25:53

to be aimed at like the collector's home market or

25:55

whether it's going to be, you know priced So it's

25:57

only affordable to arcades and places that you might I

26:00

play it in. Yeah. Look at this avian nice

26:02

one. I've just looked it up after you've mentioned

26:04

it. And I think, yeah, it's

26:06

probably going to be it's probably not going to be for the

26:08

home market is going to be, you know, if you're going to

26:10

be like two, three thousand pounds and

26:13

they're going to be aimed for

26:15

these arcade experience places or, you

26:17

know, in the back of like a try to

26:19

think of somewhere like like a laser quest or

26:21

a bowling alley because they tend to still have,

26:24

you know, a couple of cinemas and cinemas.

26:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Theatres and

26:28

stuff like that. But, yeah, I

26:30

mean, the savian nights one does look really nice,

26:33

really expensive. So it'd be pretty cool

26:35

to see. Yeah, does that say down

26:37

with the track balls and everything? And

26:39

that's the thing. I mean, I'm looking through the Alan

26:41

one website to try and get it'll

26:44

probably be like getting quotas a whole thing.

26:47

There is literally a nice co-op

26:49

arcade to play a cabinet. It's

26:51

got a dollar sign. Then nothing

26:53

after it. So either

26:56

it's free or it's way

26:58

out of my price range. I'm guessing probably the latter. Very

27:01

cool to see these, though, I think, you know,

27:03

because the the recharge games are really well done. You

27:06

know, I played a couple of asteroids one, like I

27:08

said, on the switch is like I've never been a

27:10

great asteroids player, but graphically, you know,

27:13

it looks gorgeous, like you said, there's kind of

27:15

neon visuals. And it's interesting that, you know, the

27:17

the Alan one brand is named after Tron because

27:19

a lot of these games look like they could literally

27:21

be straight out of a Tron movie. Yeah,

27:23

absolutely. Like so, yeah, they're very well done. So

27:25

nice to see Atari returning to the arcade, as

27:27

you know, basically the company that founded the arcade

27:29

back in the day. So a welcome return. So

27:32

if you want to read more about that and

27:34

link that up. And of course, everything else we

27:36

talk about, you'd have to Google around. You find

27:38

them all in our show notes on your podcast

27:40

app or head to our website at the retro

27:42

hour dot com. Right. Patrons, stay

27:44

tuned. We have got a couple of extra stories coming

27:46

up because, you know, we do that every week for

27:49

our patrons. Come back to news stories

27:51

because we chop the adverts out of the show. So

27:53

we don't give them a shorter podcast. So hang about.

27:55

We've got some really cool ones to talk about for

27:57

everybody else. We'll be interviewing our special guest this week.

28:00

Sherry Gray in a raise coming up in just a second. But if

28:02

you'd like to join us on Patreon,

28:04

now would be a very good time to

28:06

do it because we've just dropped the latest

28:08

episode of our bonus podcast, The Retro Hour

28:10

After Hours. Oh, that's just a fun one

28:12

to do. I've really

28:14

enjoyed that. And also, if you can't join

28:17

us on Patreon, drop us an iTunes review

28:19

as well. Yeah. And

28:21

that really helps out. It really does.

28:23

Anyway, you can support the podcast. Retweeting us

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28:34

on Patreon and all the details for that

28:36

are on the website at theretrohour.com. Now,

28:39

of course, this podcast is brought to

28:41

you every week with our incredible friends

28:43

at Bitmap Books, who are our longest-running

28:45

sponsor on The Retro Hour. I

28:48

think it's about six years we've worked with Sam

28:50

and the team at Bitmap Books. And

28:52

that's the thing, having a sponsor for that long,

28:54

it had to be a company whose products we

28:56

really believe in and we love. And also, a

28:59

group of guys who we get on really well

29:01

with as well because they're just lovely people, aren't

29:03

they? Yeah, absolutely. And I couldn't be prouder to

29:05

have Bitmap Books supporting us, especially for so long

29:08

as well because of the quality

29:10

of their books and the books that they

29:12

keep putting out are just absolutely

29:14

amazing. And they're so appealing to me.

29:17

And if you're any sort of fan of any sort

29:19

of retro video games or the history of it, you

29:22

jump on their website, you will find anything that

29:24

will appeal to you. Yeah. And

29:26

that's the thing, I mean, they are really accessible as

29:28

well. I mean, I've got loads of Bitmap Books books and

29:30

they're the kind of thing that, you know, my missus will

29:32

sometimes just flick through one if it's on the coffee table

29:34

at home or, you know, my mum comes to visit, she'll

29:36

be like, oh, what's that? It catches people's eyes

29:38

when you've got it on the shelves, I think, the design of

29:40

them. Yeah, 100%. I

29:44

love the front covers that they always do

29:46

with all the different, like with the different

29:48

sprites on there, I love those ones in

29:50

particular, the Master System one, the N64 one that

29:53

they've just put out and they're just so

29:55

eye catching. And it is

29:57

awesome to see that now they are

29:59

covering. celebrating one of our

30:01

favorite systems, the

30:03

N64 has got its

30:05

own visual compendium. Yeah man,

30:08

this looks absolutely amazing. Obviously, you know,

30:10

hundreds of different games in there, you

30:12

know, little nice descriptions about each one of those

30:14

games, but also on Earth a lot of stories

30:17

and parts of the N64 that you might

30:19

not know about. There's a lot of stuff

30:21

in there about the controller and also the

30:24

sort of after 64DD disk drive peripheral with

30:26

the whole section in about

30:28

that which looks really interesting because obviously we

30:30

don't really hear too much of that outside

30:32

of Japan. Yeah and that's the thing I

30:34

mean like all of Bitmap Books books, you know, it's presented

30:36

beautifully. You've got all the big games in there obviously Mario

30:38

64, Golden Eye, Legend of Zelda

30:40

or Carina of Time, it's all covered in there as well.

30:43

But also stuff that you might not be all that familiar

30:45

with, you know, Beetle Adventure Racing, World

30:47

Driver Championship. Joe, no, he's

30:50

a big fan. Mischief Makers,

30:52

Body Harvest as well and

30:54

like you said every one of the games has got

30:56

profiles written by a developer involved in the game or

30:58

a journalist who's got a really deep connection with the

31:00

N64 as well and there's also a Forward in the

31:03

book by David Doke who obviously worked at Rare

31:05

back in the day. So yeah, loads

31:07

of interviews by people that you'll be very familiar with

31:09

if you are an N64 fan coming in at 436

31:11

pages beautifully designed. The graphics on

31:16

the edge jump off the page. You know, it's

31:19

like there's a few things where you

31:22

kind of have fandom and you

31:25

know, it's turned into physicality and

31:27

it actually becomes something and I

31:30

think Bitmap Books is

31:32

that kind of physical version of fandom

31:34

for each little system. When you just

31:36

look at it, you can tell

31:38

the love that's in there but also just reading

31:40

it, it just feels so amazing. Like

31:44

the quality of stuff they have in

31:46

there but also, you know, like you want

31:48

to preserve these books and keep them in great

31:50

condition. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, the works of

31:52

art in themselves. So get hold

31:54

of that. If you're a fan of

31:56

Nintendo's 64-bit wonder, N64, a visual compendium

31:58

is on sale. right now check that

32:01

out obviously it helps out the podcast by supporting

32:03

our sponsors if you want to order that and

32:05

check out the rest of their catalogue as well

32:07

their website is bitmapbooks.com okay our

32:09

special guest on the way next we're

32:11

gonna be joined by the fantastic Sherry

32:14

Crainer Ray who works with some incredible

32:16

companies Origin Systems American Laser Games her

32:18

interactive LucasArts as well working on legendary

32:21

titles like the Star Wars series as well so

32:23

she's coming up on the podcast next you're

32:32

listening to the Retro Hour podcast

32:34

and we're here today with Sherry

32:36

Crainer Ray video games developer and

32:39

designer for some absolutely awesome companies

32:41

that we love you know Origin

32:43

Systems American Laser Games her interactive

32:47

also LucasArts games and Cartoon Network

32:49

she's also a pioneer of inclusiveness

32:52

in games how are you doing

32:54

Sherry? I'm doing well. It's great

32:56

to have you here and we

32:58

always ask our guests a question

33:00

when we start the podcast and

33:03

that's what was your kind of

33:05

first computer experience that really stood out

33:07

to you? I had a

33:09

VIC-20. We had

33:11

a VIC-20 and we played

33:13

text adventures my brother figured

33:15

out how to hook the VIC-20 up to the

33:18

television and so our whole family would sit

33:20

and we'd all together as a family play

33:22

the text adventure games. Were they

33:24

the Scott Adams games? Oh yes.

33:26

Yeah awesome. So why did you

33:28

get a VIC-20 then and I

33:31

mean who in the family decided

33:33

that we needed a home computer? My brother

33:36

my brother started with him and about that

33:38

time he was moving on to the Commodore

33:40

64 and so I got his VIC-20 even

33:42

though he's my younger brother it in

33:44

typical fashion the boys got the computers and then

33:46

their sisters got to hand me down since I

33:48

got the hand me down VIC-20. And what

33:51

kind of things were you doing on that machine then?

33:53

Was it mainly gaming or were you like dabbling in

33:55

programming or anything? It was gaming mostly the text

33:58

adventure games. My brother was

34:00

very active in the Commodore community, still

34:02

is actually. And so he was

34:04

the very, the one that was reading all the magazines and

34:06

actually doing the programming. I was more interested in the game

34:08

side of it. So tell us how

34:11

you got started in the industry then. What made

34:13

you want to get into the world of video

34:15

games as a profession then? Kind of explain

34:17

that kind of jump from, you know, playing games on the

34:19

Vic-20 to working in the industry. What was that kind of

34:22

path? Well you have to remember when

34:24

I started there really wasn't an industry. I

34:26

started in working, my first

34:28

game was at, my first job was at Origin Systems and

34:30

I started in 1989. So there really

34:34

wasn't an industry back then. There was

34:36

the one company here, there was Origin

34:38

and then there were a couple of

34:40

companies scattered around the country but there

34:42

wasn't an industry per se. But

34:45

the way I got started was by Dungeons

34:47

and Dragons. I played a lot of Dungeons

34:49

and Dragons and usually I was the DM,

34:52

usually running the games. And

34:54

we had a fellow

34:56

join my weekly game and after he'd been

34:59

playing with us about three months, he said, you know, we've got

35:01

an opening at our company and I think you would be great.

35:05

We want to apply. And I was like, sure,

35:07

what company is this? He says, oh, this little

35:10

company called Origin Systems and we make computer games.

35:12

And I was like, well, okay. So

35:14

he took my resume,

35:17

a couple of writing samples, some of the

35:20

Homebrew rule sets that we've been using,

35:22

some of the Homebrew adventures that I'd

35:24

written and he took those in, presented

35:27

them to Warren Spector who then called

35:29

me in for an interview and about

35:31

three weeks later I started my first

35:33

job at Origin Systems as

35:36

a writer. We didn't have designers

35:38

back then. No one had the

35:40

title designer. You were

35:42

a programmer, you were an artist or

35:45

you were a writer. Although we

35:47

did everything a designer would do.

35:49

We wrote all the conversations and

35:51

back then conversations drove the ultimate

35:53

gains. Everything was

35:55

setting flags and it's

35:58

what moved the game forward. We

36:00

basically were the designers on the game, but we were

36:02

called writers. So yeah,

36:04

so that's where I'd never really,

36:07

I mean, other than playing games on the VIC-20, I

36:09

had not done any programming. I did not

36:12

even know what a DOS prompt was. So

36:14

it was really very much being thrown in

36:16

the deep end, learning as you go. But

36:18

I did, and I

36:21

really didn't believe they were going to keep

36:23

paying me to do that. I

36:26

couldn't believe they were going to pay me to

36:28

do what I'd been basically doing for free for

36:30

all my friends running D&D games, but

36:33

they did. And then I couldn't believe that

36:35

it was even anything you could make a career

36:37

out of. And yet here I am 30 some

36:39

years later. So yeah, that's

36:42

how I got started. It's amazing how,

36:44

you know, the fantasy genre of video

36:46

games have been affected by Dungeons and

36:48

Dragons. We've had so many guests come

36:51

on and say, you know, that was

36:53

their start. And the

36:55

kind of rules then got

36:57

transferred into games and also

36:59

text adventures and crossing those

37:02

kind of together. It

37:04

is. It's definitely where

37:06

it started. I, when I'm talking to young

37:08

designers or people who think they want to

37:10

move into design and the game industry, I'm

37:12

with Helvin. You play

37:14

Dungeons and Dragons, run Dungeons and

37:16

Dragons. It's a masterclass

37:19

in understanding pacing and player input and how

37:21

to keep your players entertained and keep them

37:23

moving forward on the storyline and what you

37:25

do when they go off script. It's

37:29

very useful skills to learn when you

37:31

move into design. It's

37:33

amazing how popular it still is actually. I

37:35

went into a record store the other day

37:38

and there were vinyls

37:40

everywhere and they had Dungeons and Dragons

37:42

at the counter

37:44

as one of the main items at the moment.

37:47

Oh, I can't believe that. I mean, if you'd have

37:49

gone back and told me, you know,

37:52

30 years, 30 some years ago and said, you

37:54

know, Dungeons and Dragons is going to be popular,

37:56

I would never have believed it. I

37:58

mean, we've back then, we didn't even tell people. We played because

38:00

you know that was still back during all the

38:02

satanic panic and you know Oh,

38:05

it was terrible Dungeons and Dragons was evil

38:07

and you know You didn't tell people you played

38:09

and if somebody had told me back then that there

38:11

were going to be people going out late night television

38:14

So talking about their D&D characters and their

38:16

adventures. I would never have believed it. So it's

38:18

kind of fun I'm really glad to see it come

38:20

mainstream I think stranger things helped a lot

38:22

as well with making it cool for kids these days

38:25

as well Yeah, very

38:27

very cool. Absolutely. So, you

38:29

know when you started the origin systems And I mean were

38:31

you like familiar with them before like had you played in

38:33

any of the ultimate games and now describe what you were

38:35

Initially doing at origin then what was kind of a typical

38:37

day for you when you first started? Yeah I

38:40

I didn't know anything about it. I had never seen an ultimate.

38:42

Remember all I had was a Vic 20 Even

38:44

then what I had was you know, pretty much the Vic

38:46

20. I think I may have had my Commodore 64 by then But

38:50

so I didn't have a game Machine,

38:53

I didn't have any machine. It would have run an

38:55

ultimate and I didn't know anything about them So

38:58

I was really at coming into it

39:00

quite cold as a root So my

39:02

very first job was on Ultima 7

39:05

and the very first assignment I was given was

39:07

to research the use of

39:09

the and thou and all the grammatical

39:11

rules around it and make sure that

39:13

we were using the endow correctly in All

39:15

of our dialogue. So that was my first that

39:18

was fun And I went back

39:20

in and I I had to go through they print it all

39:22

out and I had to go through page page page

39:24

of You know hard copy of

39:26

all of our conversations and do an

39:28

edit pass to make sure we were using the

39:30

endow correctly I was wondering

39:32

how you learned the Ultima engine

39:35

then and Did

39:37

they have like in-house training? No,

39:39

it was pretty much here is Do

39:42

it and I had I had an

39:44

office mate and you know I would ask him

39:46

questions and what we didn't know from them We would

39:48

go ask the programmers, but it was really learned

39:51

by doing she was just total immersion.

39:53

Here you go You're gonna learn how to do this,

39:56

which was interesting and and hard

39:59

Yeah The say is like attacks

40:02

possible they assad like in flags

40:04

in there and vs it you

40:06

know how did you approach that

40:09

in their. It. If you're

40:11

a writer you know is is very

40:13

different sir in writing a book or

40:15

a kind of something as a star

40:17

and and end. It was

40:19

real. Interesting to learn to do. I. Somehow

40:22

took to it Quite naturally. I

40:24

understood. Flow. Charts

40:26

and really flowcharts where are big tool

40:28

that we used to keep track of.

40:31

What the questions were what the player was

40:33

saying and what those different answers drove. In

40:36

what flags that they said ah and so he

40:38

is a lot of flow chart again and it

40:40

once I started doing that in itself very natural

40:42

to me to do it and then it was

40:44

just a matter of learning the language which was

40:46

also interesting because every. Time.

40:48

We had a new are also that come out we

40:51

have new engine. Usually.

40:53

Was a new language so it wasn't the

40:55

same sister. What you did on over the

40:57

seventh was now all we did. And also

40:59

the seven party was not what we did

41:01

on Ultimate. Eight different languages, different syntax. it's

41:03

you had to live every time. And

41:05

the new features like related. And

41:08

stuff getting added in the. That

41:11

was usually started from the beginning.

41:13

Ah when we would start with

41:15

an Ultimate Richard Wood com and

41:17

say this is here's what the

41:19

message or the see him of

41:21

this game is. Ah and and

41:23

so we We knew. What?

41:26

We're getting into with the very very

41:28

beginning. I'm Lucy said the religious thing,

41:30

the whole of religion under serpent. I'll

41:32

the whole cast. Plus. Or equals battles.

41:35

That was my work. That's that was what I

41:37

focused on. Although I was

41:39

not on serpent i'll all the way through I

41:41

was taken off to. Moved. And moved onto

41:43

another project was an inhouse project called are

41:45

Sorry Legends. Ah but I was

41:47

there for the beginning of it and I established

41:49

up the whole. religion system that was that

41:52

was my worked of his of wondering

41:54

as well did you have any involvement

41:56

with but i remember ultimately to have

41:59

these like extras that would come with

42:01

it and you'd have like manuals and did you

42:03

have any involvement with those at all? I

42:06

did. I wrote the, I was a co-author

42:08

on the Serpent Isle clue book, Velsing

42:11

Scales. So yeah, I did that one.

42:14

Well, how much of an influence did

42:16

the fans have to molding the series?

42:19

I would say Richard had more influence than

42:21

the fans did. He didn't always, I mean,

42:23

we knew what they liked, that we would

42:25

keep pieces and things that they liked, but

42:29

they didn't fully guide

42:32

what we were doing. It was really more Richard's

42:34

vision. Even when he wasn't directly on the

42:36

title, like the Serpent Isle title or the Ultimate

42:38

Eight title, it still was his opening statement of

42:40

this is going to be like

42:42

this and this is what our theme is. That's what

42:45

drove us. We had

42:47

a lot of fun with our fans. They

42:49

would write us letters. We

42:51

would get letters and we would get, you know,

42:53

they would call our customer service line and we would hear

42:56

stories and things like that. But

42:58

they, I would not say they were terrible. That

43:00

was not terribly influential on where the game was

43:02

going. It was really more about bringing

43:04

Richard's visions to life. So

43:07

when did you get into creating

43:09

a game yourself? I know

43:11

you've created a title that ended up getting

43:13

cancelled or just didn't kind

43:15

of come alive. Yeah,

43:19

that was not just me. That was another,

43:22

there was a partner named Brian

43:24

Martin that was Brian's and mine. It was

43:26

predominantly Brian's initial vision for it and he

43:28

and I then worked together to bring it

43:31

into a full play. That

43:33

was our certain legends. That was a

43:35

really interesting title because

43:37

I think it was one of

43:39

the last of the grassroots projects

43:42

that Origin had that

43:44

was like really started from the trenches. Those

43:46

of us that were actually out there, you

43:49

know, writing the games on a day-to-day basis and we

43:51

said, hey, this is something we would like to do.

43:53

And we knew that they were toying

43:56

with ways to reuse the engines rather

43:58

than just tossing them away. and building

44:00

a whole new engine. And the idea with the time

44:02

was, well, we'll take the, you know, after

44:05

the Ultima moves off of that engine, then

44:07

we'll do something with that engine to kind

44:09

of monetize it and make it worth all

44:11

the time and money we put into it

44:13

while the Ultimas go on and break the

44:15

ground on the newest technology. About

44:18

that time, we had the EA buyout happen.

44:20

And so that changed a lot of the

44:22

direction of origin. It really,

44:25

it changed a lot. We had to begin

44:27

then to fit into the more corporate structure,

44:29

which we hadn't really dealt with. We were

44:31

really very freewheeling and it

44:33

was kind of the golden age of game

44:35

development, or I like to think of it

44:38

as that way, because we weren't tied to

44:40

any particular license. We weren't tied to

44:42

any particular marketing department. You

44:44

know, our big deal was you have to hit

44:46

Christmas, you know, but that was

44:48

the biggest push is you had to hit the Christmas

44:50

goal. So suddenly

44:52

being put into this much more corporate kind

44:55

of environment was a big change. And

44:57

so that's what happened to a lot of the kind of grassroots

44:59

basic projects we all kind of got swept

45:03

up in that. Was there more

45:05

pressure to, you know, stick to the same

45:07

engine and not change that much then? Right.

45:10

And to produce more of the great

45:12

big blockbuster, Wing Commander,

45:15

Ultima, those big titles as compared

45:17

to trying to do any of the smaller stuff. Well,

45:20

how hard was it to get, you

45:22

know, female leads in games

45:24

back then? Oh, yeah,

45:27

there weren't any. I joke

45:29

that when I would go to the GDC,

45:32

but it was called CGDC back then. If

45:35

I went into the restroom and there was another woman

45:37

in there, I would get very excited. But hi, my

45:39

name is Sherry. Who are you? We like introduce, introduce

45:41

ourselves because we just weren't used to seeing

45:43

other women there. Estimates are less

45:46

than 3% women in the

45:48

industry at that particular point in time. I would

45:51

say it was probably even less than that, which always

45:54

kind of blew my mind.

45:56

I never really understood why we didn't see

45:58

more women because it seemed like a

46:00

natural place of storytelling and imagination and

46:02

let's pretend and that kind of stuff.

46:05

So I just, I

46:07

have always assumed that and because I had been

46:09

a DM for so long,

46:11

my games were always at least 50% female

46:13

because I played with my friends. So

46:16

to reach and come and be hit smack

46:18

in the face with this, you know, women

46:20

don't play games. I

46:23

just didn't understand that at all. I was

46:25

wondering, did you ever meet Roberta Williams at

46:27

all? I did not. I

46:29

never met Roberta. I

46:31

tried to get an interview with her when I wrote my

46:34

book, the gender inclusive game design book and she

46:36

would not, she was not giving interviews at that

46:39

point in time. So I actually never met her.

46:42

And with Altima as well, it

46:45

kind of changed later on.

46:48

I know you left, but did

46:50

you ever get involved in the Altima

46:52

Online series and just even

46:54

as a player? No, I did

46:56

not. I was already off to another, I was already

46:58

off at her interactive at that point in time and

47:01

doing stuff there. I didn't get involved in the online.

47:03

I didn't really discover MMOs

47:05

until I played Ashran's Call, was

47:07

my first MMO that I played. Apparently

47:11

Altima Online was absolutely chaotic.

47:13

Yeah. When it first

47:15

started out. Yeah. And people

47:17

forget that those games back then, Altima

47:20

Online, Ashran's Call, Dark

47:22

Age of Camelot, those games

47:24

back then, we didn't know

47:26

anything. They were the first,

47:28

right? So rules that today, things that today that we

47:30

just take for granted. Oh, of course you'd never do

47:32

that in an MMO. We didn't know that

47:34

back then. So we were doing a

47:36

lot of very different things with our MMOs back

47:39

then. And it was very exciting, very exciting time.

47:41

Well, obviously in the years and decades that followed

47:44

in that Altima has become now cult classic

47:46

now. I mean, looking back on obviously

47:48

your work on the series is renowned. Some

47:50

of your fondest memories, anything that really stands

47:52

out from your time working on the series

47:54

that you're most proud of? I've got a

47:56

lot of fun memories of working back then.

47:58

We really. We worked hard,

48:01

they'll work hard, play hard. We really did. We

48:05

had one Christmas, we decided we were

48:07

going to have a door decorating contest for the

48:09

holidays that you could decorate your office door. And

48:13

my manager was a fella named Mike

48:15

Sims and he had a nice

48:18

thick white beard. Looks

48:20

sweet like Santa. And so for the whole week

48:23

before the contest when people were decorating the doors, we

48:25

just got a Santa suit and we'd take the sand

48:27

suit on our door, we'd let Koho go back Christmas

48:29

above it. But on the

48:31

day of the competition, we put Mike,

48:34

put our manager into the Santa suit and then

48:36

taped into the door. And that was our

48:38

door decoration. How long

48:40

was he there for? Oh, probably an

48:42

hour at least. And then he was

48:44

just, he was on the door and he had

48:46

a bag, a Santa sack with candy and he was

48:49

just like, Merry Christmas, Merry Christmas, throwing candy at people

48:51

when they came down the hallway. So

48:53

yeah, we just, we ran around, we played

48:55

laser tag in the hallways. Every

48:58

Friday or every other Friday we had a

49:00

cookout, lunch was a cookout provided by

49:02

Origin. We had a lot of fun. It

49:04

was really a good time. That

49:06

does sound, it's interesting to hear about the kind

49:09

of work-life balance from, particularly

49:11

those early gaming companies when... There was no work-life balance.

49:13

We were at the office all the time. Yeah, I

49:16

was going to say, yeah. We were generally here, 99

49:18

hour working weeks when you had to have fun while

49:20

you were at work, yeah. Yeah, you lived at

49:22

work. I mean, my husband and I actually met at

49:24

Origin and we teased that the reason we met at Origin

49:27

is because we had to date somebody at work because there

49:29

was no way you ever had life outside of work. Yeah.

49:32

And obviously technology was developing at a

49:34

rapid pace around that time. A

49:37

big game changer was obviously CD-ROM when that technology

49:39

emerged. I mean, do you remember the first time

49:41

you saw a CD-ROM and it must have felt

49:43

kind of limitless, did it? What did you think

49:45

of it? What did you think? It

49:47

was Richard holding up a CD-ROM and telling us

49:49

that, because we shipped Ultima 7 part 2, we

49:51

did ship it on CD-ROM, we shipped it on

49:54

Floppies. And I remember Richard

49:56

talking about it and saying, well, we never have enough

49:58

stuff to fill up an entire CD-ROM. wrong, that

50:01

goes to showing you how. And what was

50:03

the kind of approach to it? Did

50:05

you think, oh, we're going to have to

50:07

fill this with text or images

50:09

and stuff? Because I guess

50:11

back then, you know, stuff like video was

50:14

a very kind of undeveloped

50:17

thing on CD-ROM. Back in

50:19

the day, yes. Now when I moved over, when

50:21

I got over to Herr Interactive, and

50:24

we were doing, we did full motion video

50:26

with our very first title there. And

50:28

then we had to do it where you had

50:30

to switch discs, because

50:33

we got too much to go on the discs.

50:35

So yeah, it was quite a change. Well,

50:38

let's talk about that. You know,

50:40

American laser games were famous

50:42

for like titles like, I remember Mad

50:44

Dog McCree. Mad Dog McCree,

50:47

yeah. Crime Patrol as well, you

50:49

used to see those

50:52

amazing titles, like they were groundbreaking back

50:54

then. How

50:56

did Herr Interactive come about and how

50:58

did you get involved and end up

51:00

getting the job there? I

51:02

was at Game and

51:23

took the job with Herr Interactive and I often wonder,

51:25

that was a real divergent point in my career, I

51:27

often wonder what would have happened if I had taken

51:29

the Squaresoft job instead, that would have been a very

51:32

different path than what I took. But

51:34

I was very interested in the female

51:37

audience and the female players,

51:39

because back then we were

51:41

battling the knowledge or the wisdom of

51:44

the industry at the time was girls

51:47

don't play video games, girls

51:49

won't play video games. And

51:52

I thought that was ridiculous, why? Where

51:54

would you ever think the girl would not play?

51:56

Oh no, girls will not play, so if you

51:59

talked about making games. for the female audience,

52:01

you might as well have been talking about making

52:03

games for your office chair. I

52:05

mean, that was really the reaction you got

52:07

was, what? They won't play a game, are

52:10

you kidding? So, we,

52:13

so when I spoke with the

52:15

American Leadership Games people, they had

52:17

their vice president of marketing, had

52:20

a fairly large family. And

52:22

I think she had four daughters, and

52:25

she had realized that their,

52:28

her daughters were not playing the games her sons

52:30

were, which was what

52:32

American Leadership Games was producing, and that

52:35

her daughters were interested in it. And she saw

52:37

it as an opportunity. And she said, there's a

52:39

whole market out there that we could tack

52:41

if we did games focused on the

52:43

female audience. And I took

52:45

that to heart. I said, yes, I

52:48

believe that is correct. I believe that's a whole market

52:50

out there that we

52:52

are not targeting, or that we actually

52:54

as an industry are actively shutting the door on.

52:56

I mean, when we put the chainmail

52:58

bikini babe on the cover of your box, and then

53:00

come asking me, why aren't girls playing my game? It's

53:03

like, well, they're not even picking it up. You

53:05

could, oh, how are they going to play

53:07

it if they won't even pick it up? Because you immediately from

53:09

the very beginning have told them this game is not for you.

53:12

So, so I took the job with

53:14

them. And it was

53:16

real interesting because we, it was

53:20

a stand up arcade company, we actually had a

53:22

full shop with people making and

53:24

building the cabinets and then shipping them

53:26

out with a mad dog McCree. It

53:29

was called American Laser Games because the games were

53:31

all played on laser discs. And we shipped up

53:33

the laser discs to the different people

53:36

that had the cabinets. So

53:39

on one hand, we had that going on. And

53:41

then we were breaking ground with this new market

53:44

and this new audience and doing stuff that up to

53:46

that point in time really had

53:48

not been done before. We

53:51

were very lucky in that we had the

53:53

backing of the Albuquerque Independent

53:55

School District, and they would let us go

53:57

in anytime we wanted and talk to the girls.

54:00

talk to the students. We actually had

54:02

an advisory committee set up of girls,

54:06

particularly from the junior high school, said we would bring them

54:08

in and we'd ask them questions and we would figure

54:10

out what it was that they wanted to play and

54:12

the result of that was our first title which was

54:14

McKinsey and Company. Yeah, because they

54:16

had the arcade division before as well, didn't

54:18

they? And then they must have

54:20

had a home division because I remember

54:22

Mad Dog and Green and stuff were ported to

54:24

everything so when her

54:27

interactive came around, I guess the whole

54:29

focus was on home releases as

54:31

well. Yes, yes. And

54:33

then we still had the arcade group still there because

54:36

eventually I ended up ahead of product development there

54:38

and I had the arcade group under me as well.

54:41

But yeah, so they were still there. But

54:44

Patty, the VP of marketing really wanted to

54:46

pursue this new market and see if there

54:48

wasn't something we could do there. Because

54:50

at that point in American Lazing Hands was being

54:52

squeezed. In fact,

54:55

by the time I was there, they were the

54:57

last US-based

55:00

arcade company. Everything else was coming from

55:02

Japan. And you

55:04

had people like Sierra doing FMV

55:06

games as well and expanding

55:09

into that area. Yep, exactly.

55:12

We mentioned McKinsey and Co. and that was one

55:14

of the earliest interactive CD-ROM

55:16

games targeted at young women. It

55:19

was. And you mentioned before,

55:21

I guess it would be almost a self-fulfilling

55:24

prophecy. If that image was out there that girls

55:26

don't play video games and if they were hearing

55:28

that, that would put them off playing it. And

55:30

then when times like this came along that was

55:33

specifically targeted at them, what

55:35

impact do you think that had on the audience at

55:37

the time, this title coming along aimed at them? Oh

55:40

my gosh, it was so hard. First

55:42

off, we could not get it on the shelf anywhere. Nobody

55:46

would let us put the title on the shelf.

55:49

We could not get into electronic boutique. We

55:51

could not get into Walmart. None of the companies

55:53

would put us on the shelf because

55:56

we weren't very big. So we ended

55:58

up having to market it. sell it

56:00

ourselves out of Albuquerque, New

56:02

Mexico, Little Bitty Company in New

56:05

Mexico, and it was

56:07

really hard. So we ended up, I

56:09

mean, we tried so many things with

56:11

marketing that game. We finally found

56:13

out that we could get it onto the point

56:17

of purchase at the makeup counters in like

56:19

Walmarts and the big stores. We could sell

56:22

it there. They would let us put it

56:24

there. We also, we made

56:26

a lot of arrangements because our game featured

56:28

clothes from a lot of these different manufacturers.

56:31

So Sam and Libby Shoes was another one.

56:34

So we could put it, Sam and Libby

56:36

Shoes would let us sell the game in

56:38

their store because nobody

56:40

would put us on the shelf anyplace else

56:42

because they didn't believe that girls were going

56:44

to buy games. But I tell you, we,

56:47

Little Bitty Company, doing it on our own

56:49

hook, we sold 80,000 copies of

56:51

that title. And that doesn't

56:53

sound like much today, but back then, 100,000 units

56:56

was considered a blockbuster. And we sold

56:58

it. For a new market as well.

57:00

That's good going. Yeah. And that

57:03

was, and then a year later, Barbie Fashion Designer

57:05

came out and that blew the doors open for all

57:07

of us. So she

57:09

gives, Barbie sold 600,000 units the

57:11

first year, which again, nobody had heard of

57:13

this. And so we quickly blew the lid

57:15

off that and all of a sudden it

57:18

wasn't girls don't play games. So all

57:20

of a sudden all the big manufacturers were going to

57:22

get me some of that. He thought we want

57:24

that. Well, I

57:26

love the idea that it was, you know,

57:28

created by girls as well. And I was

57:30

wondering how much input,

57:32

you know, the producers had about

57:35

the filming of FMV games. And did

57:37

they kind of just receive the footage

57:39

or was that like a whole storyboarding

57:42

process and a real kind of detail

57:44

with it? There was a lot

57:46

of detail and we did it all in Albuquerque. We didn't

57:48

have a studio in house,

57:51

but we went ahead and they did have a

57:53

studio there in Albuquerque. We could rent sound

57:56

stage time and we did it with on

57:58

a green screen with the actors

58:00

we brought in from Hollywood. Yeah,

58:03

we did it all ourselves there. I directed it.

58:05

I was creative director on the shoots for those

58:07

things. So yeah, we did it all there. My

58:11

favorite story about that is I actually did

58:13

not do that on McKinsey and Company. McKinsey

58:15

and Company already had the footage shot when

58:17

they brought me in but I did

58:19

it on our next title which was the Vampire Diaries title

58:22

and we had a scene where if

58:24

at one point in the branching conversations,

58:26

if you answered the question

58:28

or talked to right and said the right things at

58:30

the right time, the vampire

58:33

would kiss you. And

58:35

we were filming that

58:37

segment and the

58:39

actor was a very handsome young man

58:42

and he's responding to these cues

58:44

that we'd given him about what the player

58:46

had said and at one point, we

58:48

said the thing that would cause him to kiss the

58:50

character and he dropped

58:53

his head and he leans into the camera and

58:55

I was watching because again, I was creative director

58:57

and all the women behind me went and

59:01

it was wonderful. I said I've done it. This

59:03

is exactly what I wanted. I wanted to get

59:05

these kinds of reactions from women who did this.

59:07

So yeah, it was really fun. That's

59:10

awesome. Yeah, vampires

59:12

is still a theme that's massive

59:15

today. Another

59:18

game as well was Nancy Drew and

59:21

what was it like when her interactive got

59:23

involved with that whole series? That

59:25

was really interesting. I

59:28

was really glad when we were able to do the Nancy

59:30

Drew. This kind of goes back to what

59:32

I was talking about the whole when the industry said get me

59:34

some of that. It was all excited about girls

59:36

games. Well, they were

59:39

but they weren't. When they said

59:41

we want games for girls, what they really were

59:43

saying is we want a Barbie knockoff. We want

59:45

fashion shopping and makeup for girls ages six to

59:47

ten. If you brought

59:50

them anything else like Vampire Diaries or

59:52

Nancy Drew, once again, we

59:54

had trouble getting on the shelves because

59:56

it wasn't a Barbie clone. They really weren't

59:58

Barbie clones which is why. that point in

1:00:00

time, we started seeing this market

1:00:02

flooded with all these fashion shopping

1:00:04

and makeup for young girls. And

1:00:07

they all looked tried to look like Barbie and of

1:00:10

course, they didn't do well because only Barbie can be

1:00:12

Barbie, right? And so, those

1:00:14

games didn't do well. So, they started cutting their

1:00:16

budgets back, less production quality

1:00:19

with teams that really didn't even really want

1:00:21

to do these things. So,

1:00:23

the quality dropped and so, the game's

1:00:28

was fed not very good stuff and

1:00:31

the game started not making money and then the industry

1:00:33

turned on its heel and said, see, we told you

1:00:35

girls don't play games and turned their

1:00:37

back on the girls market. We actually

1:00:39

still see repercussions of that today. Even today, you

1:00:41

can't go out and say I'm going to make

1:00:43

games for girls because the

1:00:46

industry still believes they won't do

1:00:48

it. Now, you can tell

1:00:50

them you're making social games or puzzle games and

1:00:52

we all know that the major market for that

1:00:55

is females, women, but they won't call

1:00:57

them that. So, we still

1:00:59

feel the repercussions of what happened back

1:01:02

then. Well, as

1:01:04

technology moved on as

1:01:06

well, games kind of changed and MMOs

1:01:09

became an absolutely massive

1:01:12

area. How

1:01:14

did you change your approach to

1:01:16

games design when MMOs came

1:01:18

around? I

1:01:21

fell back onto my Dungeons and Dragons. That's

1:01:23

probably where it really paid off that I played

1:01:25

so much and designed so much and run so

1:01:28

much Dungeons and Dragons because that's my

1:01:31

first MMO, like I said, with

1:01:33

Ashron's Call. So, what happened was I had somebody reach

1:01:35

out to me and say, we want to make an

1:01:37

MMO for girls. Can you help us? Absolutely.

1:01:39

Sure, I can help that and then I hooked up the

1:01:41

phone and thought, well, I guess I better go play one

1:01:43

of these if I'm going to help them develop one and

1:01:46

I went out and I went to the local

1:01:48

shop Best Buy here and I walked to

1:01:51

the rack and I looked and here's Ashron's

1:01:53

Call and it's on sale

1:01:55

for $9.99 with a $10 rebate.

1:02:00

And I'm like ice that. Sounds good to

1:02:02

me so they can get the game for free.

1:02:04

So I brought it home and I booted up

1:02:06

and I walked through what my character soon to

1:02:08

toil walk out into this big open world of

1:02:10

though it oh this is it. This. Is

1:02:12

why I wanna design for because this is

1:02:14

basically. Designing. Dungeons.

1:02:16

Dragons Running Dungeons and Dragons game for.

1:02:19

You. Know hundred thousand people at a time

1:02:21

how great is that? Side. By

1:02:23

so back on that. The interesting thing as

1:02:26

you is. It really is. When

1:02:28

you're designing games, it's about remembering to

1:02:30

leave. The doors open. For

1:02:32

everybody. And not shutting the

1:02:34

doors. I knew markets. And so

1:02:36

that was always. A key feature when I

1:02:38

was working either alone or. Working with

1:02:40

other designers is like make sure the

1:02:43

to.you're not putting any more roadblocks then

1:02:45

we need to have. So.

1:02:48

When you're developing characters, Are to from the

1:02:50

very. Minute you you walk into the game

1:02:52

and you're doing your character creation, make sure

1:02:54

everybody can see themselves reflected in that. So.

1:02:57

They feel welcome, feel like they want to play

1:02:59

this game. Don't shut the door on them. When

1:03:02

you're designing you to soil, look at you different

1:03:04

worry styles, make sure that you're making this available

1:03:06

to everybody who wants to learn to play because.

1:03:08

You. Won't have to play your game up in

1:03:10

want them to the to give you the money

1:03:13

so we could all keep working on our jobs

1:03:15

and this the i'm really fun industry see want

1:03:17

to make sure it's open? So when it came

1:03:19

to the Mm owes it really was about making

1:03:21

sure those doors were open and making sure that

1:03:23

we had something. For everybody. As

1:03:26

as wide as we could. As. An

1:03:28

as a great approach as well because you know

1:03:30

you can seem to someone who maybe wants to

1:03:32

just kind of did that so into the one

1:03:34

of them are most sometimes a conceal a little

1:03:36

bit overwhelming like you don't really know where to

1:03:38

start because it isn't that much of a big

1:03:40

world isn't as low as a welcoming new players.

1:03:43

As. Best as possible at me as a

1:03:45

good place to have done said tutorials and

1:03:48

and the first time these experiences is just

1:03:50

so important because. That's where he industry touch

1:03:52

him. And if they don't feel welcome

1:03:54

that they don't feel like to, they'll feel comfortable than

1:03:56

I'm not going to stay and will. Now the was

1:03:58

moved into this world of the free. The point where

1:04:00

we need the people to continually be

1:04:02

engaged. In our titles is not just that. go buy

1:04:05

it off the shelf and that's the only time I

1:04:07

see them. I want them to stay involved because I

1:04:09

wanted. To start, Neil keep. Sending.

1:04:11

Me money and never transactions or whatever.

1:04:13

The friedly deal cease. To.

1:04:15

Do that. I have to keep some balls

1:04:18

for have to make them feel welcome and

1:04:20

make them feel like they're you're making progress

1:04:22

and what they're doing is worthwhile and a

1:04:24

can't just. Before one particular type of market

1:04:26

with gotta make sure the doors are open

1:04:28

as wide. As they can be. You. Also

1:04:31

have done the. And we

1:04:33

the biggest franchise in the world with

1:04:35

the historic galaxies in the series expansions

1:04:37

as well. I'm interested to hear or

1:04:39

in a working on a a huge

1:04:41

franchise like Star Wars is going as

1:04:43

really hardcore fans can. how you balance

1:04:45

the. The. Expectations of Star

1:04:47

Wars fans to have games and

1:04:50

characters a certain way? Where is.

1:04:52

The. Creative freedom of see you need to

1:04:55

develop new content in unison. Such a

1:04:57

rich universe had that balance gonna work.

1:04:59

So. I was not on to launch

1:05:01

team for Star Wars Galaxies. I came

1:05:03

on post launch on that lot of

1:05:05

the team had already moved on to

1:05:07

doing the first Dlc which is the

1:05:10

don't Light. Speed to the core team had

1:05:12

moved on from there and I came in

1:05:14

a. Post. Launch saw a so

1:05:16

on and I was. Had.

1:05:18

A Contents I was appointed director so

1:05:20

that was a real important question for

1:05:22

me. Although. I

1:05:24

will say a lot of that was overseen

1:05:26

by Lucas. or Lucas was not part of

1:05:29

Disney's this point in time so we were

1:05:31

still working with. Lucas directly. And

1:05:33

they had a lot of say a lot of say

1:05:35

into what we did. it did not do and. Clinton

1:05:37

could not do everything we did. Ran

1:05:39

through them from the minute we had

1:05:41

the concepts. Here's the ideas of what

1:05:43

we're going to be doing to. Here's

1:05:46

the dialogue. the characters are going to

1:05:48

be said to shield. Here's the first

1:05:50

beta test of it's they were there

1:05:52

and they gave permissions and gave us

1:05:54

and gave us feedback on it. So

1:05:56

so we have lost support in that

1:05:58

area. From Lucas that helped. Kind.

1:06:01

Of make sure we stayed on the track know

1:06:03

we we did have a little bit or problem

1:06:05

in that the. The timeline point

1:06:07

that they had given us as and that was

1:06:09

a big would you go to make again with

1:06:11

them. With the time there was a okay Here's

1:06:13

here's the. Point in the timeline

1:06:16

where we feel like the skin will sit. And

1:06:19

the point in the timeline where they had given us. Did.

1:06:22

Not have a lot of Jet. I. It

1:06:24

if any at all, it's a lot. Of course was the

1:06:27

big. Problem with

1:06:29

Star Wars Galaxies as we could not.

1:06:31

Believe because of what. Lucas said we could

1:06:34

not put your diet and because at that

1:06:36

point the timeline there weren't really any July

1:06:38

active. In the story lines. So.

1:06:41

Shocked. As you've gotta stick accurately to

1:06:43

the door. See

1:06:45

that if you during your game rather will

1:06:47

boy says but yes ten and is king

1:06:49

for sure. You had. To stay with ten. And

1:06:52

then again, we had Lucas are every step of the way.

1:06:54

Other I was wondering them what the

1:06:57

kind of effect of Weird Warcraft was

1:06:59

when when that drops on the I

1:07:01

am a my world. Oh. So.

1:07:03

Was tough when when the World of Warcraft

1:07:06

came out we were already out. Oh would

1:07:08

World War Craft was lot to came out

1:07:10

Of course. Immediately or told go play it

1:07:12

for plate immediately. Know

1:07:15

and. It's.

1:07:17

Became the whole mark

1:07:19

everybody else was held

1:07:21

to. Hear you. Had

1:07:24

to you everything you did Well

1:07:26

We'll Warcraft is doing. This Much better.

1:07:28

How come you're not. And.

1:07:30

So that was it. it. it. Became.

1:07:32

Kind of the stick that we were all beat

1:07:34

with. In and not just where I was everybody.

1:07:36

everybody. An industry. Was. Being

1:07:38

held. Up to World or crafted. Why are

1:07:41

you doing as good as World War Craft?

1:07:43

And do you expect to to at least

1:07:45

do it? As well as they were doing

1:07:47

if not better, Than everything was supposed to

1:07:49

be. We need to make a world war craft

1:07:51

killer that's a robot thing was pitched that way.

1:07:54

And. It made a very difficult ah because

1:07:56

what they found is what we found was.

1:08:00

The were pressured to adapt

1:08:02

many of the World of

1:08:04

Warcraft mechanics. And

1:08:07

put them into organ. And

1:08:09

that made it very difficult because

1:08:12

remember stores, Galaxies was sandbox. And

1:08:14

To Warcraft is not a sandbox. And.

1:08:17

So they they really wanted us to make

1:08:19

it that way. That. Mr.

1:08:21

Celebrate like China sources a square

1:08:23

peg until around home as low

1:08:26

as Isis. Absolutely absolutely did. It

1:08:28

was hard to because it's like

1:08:30

you so. You.

1:08:32

Sell your players like I sell if I

1:08:34

send a sell you a magazine and I'm

1:08:36

selling you. You. Know only. Time

1:08:40

Magazine. And. I'm selling you

1:08:42

Time Magazine and every week Time Magazine

1:08:44

shows up in in one week Tennis

1:08:46

World shows up instead. It's like wait

1:08:48

the since two thousand pay and for

1:08:50

I didn't pay for Tennis World I

1:08:52

want Times Magazine or so we we

1:08:54

had that gallons. We did have a

1:08:56

very solid player base. But.

1:08:58

They like that particular type of game and

1:09:00

then so when we were being pressured to

1:09:03

change it into the more bought Warcraft style

1:09:05

game. Or it was difficult.

1:09:07

It was very it was hard to facility and because

1:09:09

we all love that day we lift or get me

1:09:11

anything you have put that ten hours and that present.

1:09:13

As you licenses and we become very

1:09:16

attached to it. So. Is very

1:09:18

hard pressed to. Have. To change it.

1:09:21

When. Also you words on I'm

1:09:23

Susan Full which was a Cartoon

1:09:25

Network Universe a memo but I

1:09:28

was also browser based. What?

1:09:30

Was a difference of. You know, working

1:09:32

with a browser compared to a crime. I'm.

1:09:35

Said it was difficult back then because it

1:09:37

was one of the early if the early

1:09:39

side of the browser. but truthfully the bigger.

1:09:41

Problem. With Susan Fall and again I was

1:09:43

when I worked. As usual, I was on the

1:09:45

initial creative concept side of it was awarded the

1:09:47

production. I was not as active with it. I

1:09:49

was. In Creative. End.

1:09:51

Of it, I'm. Really the hard part

1:09:54

was that was trying to figure out how to word

1:09:56

all those different art styles and a one game. Yeah.

1:10:00

Because every a Cartoon Network

1:10:02

a. We. Did we had already

1:10:04

knew I. Am. So you gotta put

1:10:06

you know and cities and Fargo and same

1:10:08

world with. His own Dexter's

1:10:11

Lab and power puff girls and

1:10:13

fails look very different. So now

1:10:15

is that. took a lotta

1:10:17

wrangling. And. Because also each one

1:10:19

of those cartoons has their own. People.

1:10:22

We. Had we were negotiated with lots of different

1:10:25

people trying to get their approval us of that

1:10:27

was that was really difficult actually think I think

1:10:29

we did a really great job. Or

1:10:32

I'm interested. He didn't. Hit.

1:10:34

Them that we're still for having. These

1:10:37

yourself was worrying about working with.

1:10:39

The children's market and what we could do.

1:10:42

That. Became a difficulties. Last.

1:10:44

One thing about Emma Moses, they are

1:10:47

in a totally reliance on service which

1:10:49

have to be paid for by companies

1:10:51

and many of the the earlier memos

1:10:53

now we've seen. says. Has been

1:10:56

turned off over the last decade or so.

1:10:58

I mean, how do you feel about that?

1:11:00

Because I'm in the wheels. Talk about game.

1:11:02

Preservation is is very important. two. Sons

1:11:04

of Retro Gaming for example you know as as was

1:11:07

be topic and in our world are you going to

1:11:09

feel about you know those the service been sir no

1:11:11

families will kind of been lost forever and he think

1:11:13

there's anything that's the could be don't see preserve the

1:11:15

more. Oh my gosh, it makes me

1:11:17

so sad. It makes me so sad because we

1:11:20

do lose our history and and we talk about

1:11:22

the film and sir losing the history because the

1:11:24

older princess disintegrated in Fall Apart before the can

1:11:26

be digitized. They are to

1:11:28

see literally Just that is the shut the service

1:11:31

down and. To. Know the race stomach

1:11:33

thrive in the trash heap and. Our

1:11:35

worlds, all our work is gone

1:11:37

and we don't have the opportunity.

1:11:40

To. Teach from some. I mean we

1:11:42

have people. Coming. Into the

1:11:45

games industry today that never had the

1:11:47

opportunity to play Dark Age of Camelot.

1:11:50

Of and that's an important one to go look at. I

1:11:52

mean we did or less has to be learned from all

1:11:54

of them. I. I. Do.

1:11:57

My archives and the law works has been promised

1:11:59

to the store. Museum at Play here

1:12:01

in the Us. And. I

1:12:03

really wish I had I've talked to them about

1:12:05

have taught them people. I really wish we could

1:12:07

figure out some way. That

1:12:10

we could preserve those

1:12:12

games. Almost

1:12:14

Time Capsule. What to wear? If you really

1:12:16

want to go see Dark Age of Camelot

1:12:18

or or something like that you you could

1:12:20

go there to the museum will. They would

1:12:22

have dedicated servers you could see them. Preserves.

1:12:25

The way they were when they were. Released.

1:12:28

Because. There's just so much there that

1:12:31

could be learned there. So many lessons.

1:12:34

You. Know some of them her that delivers a

1:12:36

core single. See Ultima online and today the emulators.

1:12:38

The Star Wars Galaxies. There's there's a meal years

1:12:40

out there that it's still running in. You can

1:12:42

still go play it. But. Even then,

1:12:45

it's changed because. Teams that to

1:12:47

the running and to them and changed on

1:12:49

Monday are like they were. When. They

1:12:51

were least, so I really wish there was a

1:12:53

way that we could preserve some. To.

1:12:55

So people to learn. From. Having

1:12:57

a living breathing will notice is hop

1:13:00

and to capture and replicase. Know this.

1:13:02

Gift. But. Awesome and we've

1:13:05

been told about how you know You've

1:13:07

always been a pioneer of in addressing

1:13:09

inclusivity in gaming and he wrote a

1:13:11

book as well Gender Inclusive Game Design.

1:13:13

Expanding. The market so. What?

1:13:15

Prompted you to write a book in. Huddersfield.

1:13:18

The conversations evolved since the book

1:13:20

was released. So. And we

1:13:22

wrote that book. I was approached to ride it. Publisher

1:13:24

came to me and it hurt. A couple of my

1:13:27

talks they said would you consider writing a book and

1:13:29

my first nancy was why. Isn't.

1:13:31

This just common sense since people just noses

1:13:33

to says it seems like common sense to

1:13:35

me and good game design and probably not

1:13:38

assess and they ask me to write it

1:13:40

And so I did and I thought okay

1:13:42

the silly the first and they'll be more

1:13:45

books they'll come along and more people explore

1:13:47

This. And they didn't

1:13:49

since wants to play the surprised that more

1:13:51

has it meant on those claymore the season

1:13:53

Neil Somebody had to say right? Somebody had

1:13:55

to talk about this. Opening

1:13:58

up the doors and letting more people. Into

1:14:00

our games Army. So.

1:14:02

That we can grow our industry and grow our

1:14:05

markets and keep people playing And keep. Ourselves employed

1:14:07

bluntly so we can keep making these. Fun!

1:14:09

Things. Because if we don't grow

1:14:11

our markets and don't. Cheat. Bringing in the

1:14:13

players will be out of work in that would be

1:14:15

very sad. Well like what I

1:14:17

do since I'd like to keep working. So.

1:14:20

I I. I always thought it was your. More

1:14:23

would be done and will be written and and

1:14:25

it hasn't. Been. On

1:14:27

the other hand, we are

1:14:30

seeing increases in interest in

1:14:32

and inclusivity and accessibility. And

1:14:35

and that. Makes me happy.

1:14:37

I am glad to see. That.

1:14:40

The interest is still there. People are still talking

1:14:42

about it in their arse. Efforts

1:14:44

being made, To. Keep the doors

1:14:47

open for everybody. And so I'm I'm glad to

1:14:49

see that as the numbers are increasing. Like

1:14:51

a said when I was. First.

1:14:53

Starting it was pointless. And three percent women

1:14:55

in development. And now or somewhere around twenty

1:14:57

five, twenty two to twenty five percent women.

1:14:59

Which is amazing. I'm so glad to see

1:15:01

that's not why I'd like to be, but

1:15:03

it's certainly been or we're seeing our. Diversity

1:15:06

in representational were seem

1:15:09

more Hispanics and more.

1:15:12

People. of color coming in and that's good because

1:15:14

the more voices of the table we have the

1:15:16

that are our products are. Do.

1:15:18

You think the am in the

1:15:20

game scene is also helped them

1:15:23

give people a kind of a

1:15:25

Lego poorer entry into the video

1:15:27

game will do usually wouldn't. It.

1:15:29

Does absolutely does. It also helps

1:15:31

us the way the indie film

1:15:33

is that helps the film industry.

1:15:35

allows us to experiment with new

1:15:37

styles and new gameplay ideas and

1:15:39

things like that. Ah, I. Believe.

1:15:43

That we still need to continue working on

1:15:45

our diversity in our in our educational programs

1:15:47

so that the people who are coming out

1:15:49

with the skill sets to do the indie

1:15:51

games are diverse. It's not that's

1:15:53

not yet where it should be, but it is still

1:15:55

improving. We're getting better. Or. Serious

1:15:57

been incredible to hear. Your

1:16:00

history in the industry and what are you

1:16:02

working on? this? those and anything we should

1:16:04

be looking out for me. I'm. Currently

1:16:06

doing quite a bit of a. Contract

1:16:09

and consulting work on Ice that

1:16:11

I actually tried to retire that

1:16:13

didn't work? is people tell is

1:16:15

still want to talk about diversity

1:16:17

and inclusivity? So primarily what I'm

1:16:19

doing is a lot of consulting

1:16:21

a contract work, particularly around the

1:16:23

diversity, inclusivity, accessibility areas. Which

1:16:26

is exciting to is excited to be. The

1:16:28

people want that they want. That. Kind

1:16:31

of input into their games and low

1:16:33

understand it, you know? Keeping.

1:16:35

Our markets expanding is good for ever. Done.

1:16:37

Via. One hundred percent breaking down barriers and games

1:16:40

to be accessible to everyone in other the more

1:16:42

the merrier is fine. As absolutely Wilkes

1:16:44

Jerry Springer Amazing to I'm his some of

1:16:46

your your memories and you know you have

1:16:48

an incredible career and us and our as

1:16:50

did some time to relax some point the

1:16:53

thank you So what's more coming on and

1:16:55

have been I guess this weekend that and

1:16:57

with it has been wonderful stilted. Plus

1:16:59

I keep having the it's That alongside.