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Hello! Chris Donlan here. David Goldfarb, our regular columnist, is away this week, so I've asked Rob Fearon to write something instead and he has very kindly agreed. Rob designs wonderful arcade games such as DRM (which does not include DRM) and he is also a brilliant writer. I know: what a massive jerk. I really hope you enjoy what he's come up with today. Also, look at THIS.I grew up in an all too typical 1980's northern town. Factories closed, unemployment rose. First friends of the family left jobless, then my parents. The stinking grey skies a reminder that the wheels of industry still turned close, the lack of food in the cupboard and the tears and upset a constant reminder of how out of reach most work in the area remained.
I got a Spectrum when I was younger, before the work and the money ran dry. I'd rush home from school to play Jetpac, Jet Set Willy, Jumping Jack and other games beginning with J. I loved playing games but I never felt like I could actually write the things. Sure, I'd tinker with The Quill to make hilarious (not actually hilarious) adventure games (for the kids that's what we'd now call "interactive fiction" or what a subset of idiots would call "not a game"), then there was HURG, GAC and SEUCK and other tools with awful acronyms designed to help make making games easier. In the main they were too limited or too difficult for me to use. Besides, I really liked playing games and making them seriously cuts into the time you can spend doing that, yeah?
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