Post by dm on Sept 23, 2005 11:25:43 GMT -5
Uh oh… Guess who found this site quite by accident…
Hi!
Wow, I’m amazed! the site is excellent, Bill congrats awesome job indeed! I read through most of the posts and they brought back many memories, many… Quick list:
“Top” memories:
Friday nights out round Manchester with the Ocean mob
Working with some amazingly talented people (Elmer, Mick West and Rab C!) – not to mention all the rest of you J
The creativity, nuff said, quick examples, Simon Butlers ability to create “toons” of anyone at work, Rob Hemp’s eye for detail and of course Warren!
Tuesday night’s football practice (think it was on a Tuesday?)
The humour… where to begin…
Getting a game done, finished, shipped… (priceless…)
… Not so “top” memories:
Waking up extremely hung over with the rest of the Ocean mob at the old Ocean offices (Bobbys stag night springs to mind)
Second guessing myself at times wondering if I was “up to the job”, was tuff at the start. I remember finishing my 1st project (Navy Seals GB) and thinking I did crap, getting called into Garys office half expecting to be let go (I was pleasantly surprised)
Getting stuck halfway across Snake Pass late on a Monday night… Long-short-story, Dave Collier fitted his alarm system into my car, all worked fine till this one craptastic night when I stopped the car to “take a leak” by the side of the road… got back in the car and voila! I had an all nighter alone on the moors! Awesome! Must do it again…
Being chased around the football pitch by a very pissed Alan Short… “DOOOOOOOSH!”
Some of the politics that started to creep into Ocean prior to me leaving, nuff said
My last project at Ocean, Jesus I don’t know where to start on that one, f-ing mess – and I apologize upfront to anyone involved.
Anyways I could go on and on, and I think I have already. I’m sure one or two of you, well one of you at least is probably wondering what I have been up to in the US, well here goes:
Arrived here and worked for a small software company, Paradox Ent. Friendly people etc etc but not my cup of tea…
Pulse Ent. After only a handful of months at Paradox I joined Pulse Entertainment in Santa Monica, this was a fun place, lots of talent (lots) but they were geared towards toolsets, not games, I helped them get “into games” – and at which point they folded their Santa Monica office… sigh
… However, a bunch of us took over the reigns so to speak and with a contract from Microsoft began developing a title for them, we became a new company at that point, “eight cylinder studios”. During this time 8CS also worked on some web tools, and to cut a long story short (which I seem to be doing a lot), Microsoft pulled the plug on the game after 8 or so months and 8CS moved to the Bay area to concentrate on web engines. I had the chance to go with them, but I didn’t, as web development didn’t interest me.
So jobless in Santa Monica, I ended up working for another company there, Black Op’s Entertainment. I did one project with them, it was great, I was the art director on an EA basketball title – why was it great? Basically, we got the job done in 9 months, no politics, no crap; we just created a game and shipped it on time. Good bunch of guys, I enjoyed my stint with Black Op’s but left after the basketball title as I was burned out with sports games (not my cup of tea to start with) and what they had coming up was more sports stuff. Anyway, good bunch of guys.
*around this time I got married, to Denise “a very cute girl from Chicago” tm.
From Black Op’s I went to “The Collective”… there I basically felt like a game design monkey, I’d type designs all day long… type type type type type… I helped out with the design of DS9 (PC) and also assisted with the design of “Buffy the vampire slayer” (Xbox). It was interesting working there, but I left after 10 months or so, one of my main reasons for leaving… the commute. The drive from where I lived to Laguna Beach (where the collective used to be, they’ve moved since) took me about an hour + 40 minutes, and close to 2 hours on the way back, 5-6 days a week… yeah it got old.
I left the industry at that point, this is 3 years or so ago. I could write a bunch of crap on the state of the games biz but I wont, you’ve all heard it before, it’s changed…
So what have I been up to since?
Towards the end of working at the collective I started dabbling in pc-coding, and after I left the collective my wife and I (who is a doctor) came up with some ideas for software to help kids with attention problems. So I worked on a couple of projects, was fun and helped me learn more about coding on the PC.
During this time we also bought/sold houses, you know the deal, buy something, do it up, sell it, rinse/repeat etc. We live in a small town called Redondo Beach (southern California), which is ironically next to the ocean. Property prices here are pretty insane, so the house flipping technique worked well. Hard work though, seriously back breaking, remodeling kitchens/bathrooms/other rooms etc. But well worth the effort.
However…
… The dark icy grip of “gaming” still had its hold on me, during all the remodeling etc I started designing then coding a game for the PC. Based on a bunch of ideas I had years ago. The game, Demons Co. is almost almost really almost… finished. It will be entering its beta testing phase sometime before this Halloween. After which I plan to sell it via the web.
Also I’m freelancing with a small games company here in the south bay, helping with both project management and game design. Its fun, they are an awesome bunch of guys and it only takes a couple of hours out of my day, which then leaves me plenty of time to work on my own project etc
So basically that’s me in a nutshell, I have a house in Redondo Beach, next to its village. My wife has her private practice in the village itself and we have a white Siberian husky a minx but cute!
I’m going to wrap up now as me mums just got up; she arrived in from Manchester last night, here for a couple of weeks. Denise and I will be in Manchester November 26- December 9 and would love to meet up with some of you if possible.
Take care,
don
Hi!
Wow, I’m amazed! the site is excellent, Bill congrats awesome job indeed! I read through most of the posts and they brought back many memories, many… Quick list:
“Top” memories:
Friday nights out round Manchester with the Ocean mob
Working with some amazingly talented people (Elmer, Mick West and Rab C!) – not to mention all the rest of you J
The creativity, nuff said, quick examples, Simon Butlers ability to create “toons” of anyone at work, Rob Hemp’s eye for detail and of course Warren!
Tuesday night’s football practice (think it was on a Tuesday?)
The humour… where to begin…
Getting a game done, finished, shipped… (priceless…)
… Not so “top” memories:
Waking up extremely hung over with the rest of the Ocean mob at the old Ocean offices (Bobbys stag night springs to mind)
Second guessing myself at times wondering if I was “up to the job”, was tuff at the start. I remember finishing my 1st project (Navy Seals GB) and thinking I did crap, getting called into Garys office half expecting to be let go (I was pleasantly surprised)
Getting stuck halfway across Snake Pass late on a Monday night… Long-short-story, Dave Collier fitted his alarm system into my car, all worked fine till this one craptastic night when I stopped the car to “take a leak” by the side of the road… got back in the car and voila! I had an all nighter alone on the moors! Awesome! Must do it again…
Being chased around the football pitch by a very pissed Alan Short… “DOOOOOOOSH!”
Some of the politics that started to creep into Ocean prior to me leaving, nuff said
My last project at Ocean, Jesus I don’t know where to start on that one, f-ing mess – and I apologize upfront to anyone involved.
Anyways I could go on and on, and I think I have already. I’m sure one or two of you, well one of you at least is probably wondering what I have been up to in the US, well here goes:
Arrived here and worked for a small software company, Paradox Ent. Friendly people etc etc but not my cup of tea…
Pulse Ent. After only a handful of months at Paradox I joined Pulse Entertainment in Santa Monica, this was a fun place, lots of talent (lots) but they were geared towards toolsets, not games, I helped them get “into games” – and at which point they folded their Santa Monica office… sigh
… However, a bunch of us took over the reigns so to speak and with a contract from Microsoft began developing a title for them, we became a new company at that point, “eight cylinder studios”. During this time 8CS also worked on some web tools, and to cut a long story short (which I seem to be doing a lot), Microsoft pulled the plug on the game after 8 or so months and 8CS moved to the Bay area to concentrate on web engines. I had the chance to go with them, but I didn’t, as web development didn’t interest me.
So jobless in Santa Monica, I ended up working for another company there, Black Op’s Entertainment. I did one project with them, it was great, I was the art director on an EA basketball title – why was it great? Basically, we got the job done in 9 months, no politics, no crap; we just created a game and shipped it on time. Good bunch of guys, I enjoyed my stint with Black Op’s but left after the basketball title as I was burned out with sports games (not my cup of tea to start with) and what they had coming up was more sports stuff. Anyway, good bunch of guys.
*around this time I got married, to Denise “a very cute girl from Chicago” tm.
From Black Op’s I went to “The Collective”… there I basically felt like a game design monkey, I’d type designs all day long… type type type type type… I helped out with the design of DS9 (PC) and also assisted with the design of “Buffy the vampire slayer” (Xbox). It was interesting working there, but I left after 10 months or so, one of my main reasons for leaving… the commute. The drive from where I lived to Laguna Beach (where the collective used to be, they’ve moved since) took me about an hour + 40 minutes, and close to 2 hours on the way back, 5-6 days a week… yeah it got old.
I left the industry at that point, this is 3 years or so ago. I could write a bunch of crap on the state of the games biz but I wont, you’ve all heard it before, it’s changed…
So what have I been up to since?
Towards the end of working at the collective I started dabbling in pc-coding, and after I left the collective my wife and I (who is a doctor) came up with some ideas for software to help kids with attention problems. So I worked on a couple of projects, was fun and helped me learn more about coding on the PC.
During this time we also bought/sold houses, you know the deal, buy something, do it up, sell it, rinse/repeat etc. We live in a small town called Redondo Beach (southern California), which is ironically next to the ocean. Property prices here are pretty insane, so the house flipping technique worked well. Hard work though, seriously back breaking, remodeling kitchens/bathrooms/other rooms etc. But well worth the effort.
However…
… The dark icy grip of “gaming” still had its hold on me, during all the remodeling etc I started designing then coding a game for the PC. Based on a bunch of ideas I had years ago. The game, Demons Co. is almost almost really almost… finished. It will be entering its beta testing phase sometime before this Halloween. After which I plan to sell it via the web.
Also I’m freelancing with a small games company here in the south bay, helping with both project management and game design. Its fun, they are an awesome bunch of guys and it only takes a couple of hours out of my day, which then leaves me plenty of time to work on my own project etc
So basically that’s me in a nutshell, I have a house in Redondo Beach, next to its village. My wife has her private practice in the village itself and we have a white Siberian husky a minx but cute!
I’m going to wrap up now as me mums just got up; she arrived in from Manchester last night, here for a couple of weeks. Denise and I will be in Manchester November 26- December 9 and would love to meet up with some of you if possible.
Take care,
don
