Recently the Cinemaware.com Team caught up with this important and influential Cinemaware Alumnus to find out more about him, the history of Cinemaware, and his outlook on the future of the games industry.

Q: Why did you become involved with game development?

Game design is a perfect combination of all the things I felt passionate about as a kid. At various times in my young life I wanted to be a writer, comedian, director, and scientist. Creating computer games allows me to tackle the best parts of all of these occupations.

Participating in, and providing, escapist entertainment has always been important to me. There is nothing I like more than being in the middle of a good book, watching an immersive story, gaming with friends and family, or sitting in front of my computer late at night with a large diet coke and something to munch on.

Q: What advice would you give to young folks today who are considering a career in the videogame industry?

A well-rounded education is very important. As a designer I make liberal use of nearly every class I took in high school and college: history, writing, science, mathematics, literature, philosophy, sociology, etc.

I generally counsel prospective game designers to look for a QA (Quality Assurance) job when they are getting started. Testing is a great way to learn about game development, tweaking, the production process, and more.

Programmers, artists, and musicians can usually find entry level jobs if they have samples or some kind of portfolio. Game demos are obviously preferred.

Q: What do you do today?

Pretty much the same thing I did at Cinemaware: making games. Of course, the nature of the job has changed dramatically since those early Amiga days. Games are much larger, more complex, and require a LOT more planning and organization.

Q: In your opinion, has the fact that games have gotten larger and more complex made them better?

To be honest, I think that the top games today are better than the top games even five or ten years ago; partially because the games are bigger and more involved, but mostly because of hardware advances, especially when it comes to 3D. I also believe that today's designers have the advantage of being able to build on the groundbreaking work of people like Sid Meier, Dani Bunten Berry, Ron Gilbert, and others.

Q: How did you arrive at Cinemaware?

I met Bob Jacob (who would later start Cinemaware with his wife Phyllis) when he was a software agent. I guess I must have impressed him because he offered me a job as the very first Cinemaware employee! He had already worked out contract deals for some of our early titles, but he wanted someone in-house to help manage them. My wife was a little nervous about the new position so Bob invited us down to the office for a little tour. We started by taking a look at the title sequence of "Defender of the Crown". Neither of us had seen an Amiga yet so our jaws dropped to the ground when the metal letters appeared against the stone background. And when it started animating my wife turned to me and whispered: "Take the job!"

Q: What lessons did you learn there?

Wow. Tough question. I learned a LOT about game design, the industry, working with people...in fact, probably 75% of what I know now I learned at Cinemaware. The things that immediately pop to mind are: the importance of feedback (whether it is fast response, great graphics or amazing sounds) and how to incorporate childhood fantasies into game designs (Defender of the Crown was the "knights-in-shining-armor-rescue-the-princess-Robin-Hood" fantasy; The King of Chicago was the "cops and robbers fantasy", etc.).

Q: How influential do you think Cinemaware was?

Cinemaware was known for our high presentation values: great visuals, compelling music, fun sound effects...I think in these areas we helped push the industry in a direction they were already heading, just slowly. When Cinemaware started making games only a handful of companies had trained artists on staff. That has obviously changed dramatically in the last ten years.

Q: What is your favorite game of all time? What was your favorite Cinemaware game?

I would have to say that M.U.L.E. is my favorite. It was brilliantly conceived and executed, and it helped convince my father that "game designer" might actually be a legitimate career. My favorite Cinemaware game was probably "TV Sports: Football"; not that it was more innovative or better designed than some of our other titles, but I enjoyed playing it against friends and others in the office (and I won the Office Championship in the "Arcade" division against some amazing competition. Pat Cook and I played the final game and I not only played well, everything went my way. Pat is a much better gamer so I think he is still convinced that I cheated somehow!).

Q: What are your thoughts about the current state of the game industry?

I'm not sure where the industry is going right now. Massively multiplayer games like "Everquest" and "Ultima Online" are so compelling I haven't played a single player game in ages. Hardcore gamers tend to flock to these games, and will play them for months and months. That means they are NOT buying two or three games a month, like some of them used to do. I don't know if that has had an impact on the market for hardcore games yet...but it will.

There should be a market opening up for more casual games as well, particularly entertainment involving the Internet, where friends and family can get together and even meet other people from around the world to do something more interesting than "chat".

Q: What developers or publishers do you respect the most?

Right now I'd have to say Blizzard and Westwood Studios. Great track records.

Q: From your perspective, what are Blizzard and Westwood Studios doing right?

I get the feeling that both of these companies spend a lot of time testing and tweaking their games. That's a critical part of the development process, and a lot of companies are just now figuring that out. Cinemaware didn't do a lot of outside testing, but I tweaked the bejeebers out of just about every product I worked on. Bob and Phyllis usually had to forcefully snatch the final disks out of my hands and drag me down to the disk duplicators because I didn't want to let go, "Just one more change. Pleeeeeeeease."

Q: Is there anything you'd like to say to the fans of Cinemaware?

Other than: "Thanks, you made my day"? I'm just amazed that there are people out there who still remember those early games.