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Darling Brothers, UK Indie Game Devs, Upgraded to CBE
scriptedfun writes "The BBC reports that David and Richard Darling, the brother tandem who founded Codemasters back in the mid-'80s from their bedroom, were recently made Commanders of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for their 'services to the computer games industry.' Their story is definitely inspiring for modern-day independent game developers." Naming such honorees annually is one of the perks of being Queen.
How old are you and which country? Not meant as a patronising question, it's a genuine one. If you're around my generation (I'm 36) and from the UK, chances are you will have heard of them. Spindizzy and Micro Machines being the top ones - they're stars of the 8-bit and 16-bit era really. I know they've done a lot since, but that's still what I know them for.
Cheers,
Ian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Codemasters_games
The Dizzy Series
Colin McRae series
Micro Machines
Operation Flashpoint
Overlord
The TOCA series
It's a good back-catalogue, though I was always more a fan of Bullfrog before EA ate them.
Colin McRae Rally is probably the series they're most known for in recent times, and most old-schoolers will probably think of the Dizzy games first, and Micro Machines second. Personally, I remember them for things like Jet Bike Ski Simulator on the Spectrum. Came complete with classic incomprehensible speech synthesis, but at least you didn't need an add-in speech cartridge.
I doubt I could tell you who wrote any particular game. I know the game companies are "famous" but matching up software to who wrote it ? Not a chance. As I'm writing this I'm struggling to think who wrote Doom - I know Carmack, Cash et al did it - but the name of the company escapes me ! ( Looked at the box - it's ID software * slaps head, DOH! * ) I looked at the Codemasters site as I know that I've heard of them - they've done some well regarded stuff.
while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();
The only game I can remember from them is Vampire, which has a MSX version (and looked awful like any game ported from Spectrum).
Spectrum users probably know more games from them.
If that gets modded flamebait there is no future
Most honourees, even those who disagree with the concept of hereditary monarchy (the majority), just go along with the whole deal.
Partly because it's not worth making a fuss over within the context of modern, laser-guided wrongdoings, but mostly for the improved ability to secure last-minute restaurant reservations.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
Now you've done it, giving the Spectrum two mentions in one post.
I can feel the urge to re-awaken the old 'spectrum vs Commodore 64' argument rising.
Must....resist...
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Firstly of course the award is not decided by the Queen. She is a constitutional monarch, and all such decisions are in theory made by minsters. Even they don't make most of the minor ones, delegating it to committees. This level of award confers such rights as your daughter being able to marry in St. Pauls Cathedral (the one Princess Di got married in), but little else. I'd also take exception to the notion that game development in the UK or elsewhere is a desirable career. It is so badly paid that it cannot be offshored to India because Indians won't work for that little. EA games and several other firms have been prosecuted for violations of minimum wage laws. Game developers are treated with a contempt that I have not seen in any industry (I've been a chemist, worked in banking, education, IT, journalism, night clubs and most recently headhunting), and none treat their staff so badly. Even the one nude model I know gets more respect from her employers.
Dominic Connor,Quant Headhunter
I was always a fan of Codemasters back in their Spectrum days (come on, it's time for a new generation of Dizzy games) so when someone from the company came to my university to give a talk on working for Codemasters I went along to see if I could be persuaded. Rather than selling the idea to me though, it really put me off. The gist of the talk was that Codemasters weren't interested in producing good games, only games that sold well. The guy actually said that the company wasn't interested in people who wanted to work on producing good games. I understood the point in principle, but the emphasis on commercialism ensured that I never even considered applying to them.
I can see it now, in about 5 years a bunch of natural light evading geeks lined in front of the Queen:
(To the first one)
"Please accept this MBE for fragging 50 players in under a minute without taking damage"
"Thank you, Ma'am"
(To the second one)
"Please accept this MBE for pulling off a 53 hit combo in Street Fighter IV"
"Thank you, Ma'am"
(To the third one)
"Please accept this MBE for obtaining 100% completion in GTA V"
"Thank you, Ma'am"
etc.
Summation 2
It got modded flamebait because...
We mean it man
We love our queen
And our figurehead
Is not what she seems
Bit early for my Codemasters sessions on the Speccy, but formative nonetheless.
This is where the serious fun begins.
I move to nominate David Braben and Ian Bell
MP3 Search Engine
It's actually the Honours Committees that puts together the list of people to be honored and they are guided by guidelines set up by the Prime Minister.
Spindizzy is not a Codemasters game, you are thinking of Dizzy. Spindizzy was a Marble Madness clone from Electric Dreams Software.
[Slashdot poster #1] "What could be possibly be more pathetic than _____?"
[Slashdot poster #2] "Apart from whining about it on Slashdot, you mean?"
Where _____ could be any of:
(i) Apathy to gradual loss of freedom;
(ii) RIAA's abuse of the courts;
(iii) Bribery of political officials;
(iv)
(v) Profit!
Oh look lol a meme lol, it's witty because it lacks originality.
If there's one thing many nerds are sorely lacking, it's.. well.. any sort of ability outside their narrow field of vision. Including the ability to analyse the wider impact of their decisions, which is why they're the grunts and not the management. And why, despite all their grandstanding, they're fairly easy to keep in check, and they have a rather shocking respect for power structure and authority. They can be as sycophantic as any petty bureaucrat in local government, as willing to kneel for that little morsel of favour.
Which is why I've been (-1, Troll)'d - I veered off the party line.
I'm pretty sure they're only *publishers* of some of those games; Operation Flashpoint, for instance, was developed by Prague developers Bohemia Interactive. And that turned out to be bit of a clusterfuck, with BI going on to develop the sequel, ArmA, with another publisher, and Codemasters making their own using just the name.
"Be light, stinging, insolent and melancholy"
According to WP (uncited), Codemasters were formed in 1985, and Mastertronic in 1983; but I certainly know that Mastertronic were releasing games in 1984. (In fact, having scanned the WP article for this comment, I find that apparently (uncited, again) the Darling brothers supplied many of the early Mastertronic games before going on to form Codemasters).
(*) Interestingly, I've seen no evidence that an equivalent segment existed in the US. Although the 8-bit market there was (AFAIK) mainly disc-based by that time, and Mastertronic did release some of their stuff over there on disc, you never hear Americans discussing it, which implies that it didn't really have the same success or cultural importance it did here- I mean, anyone who grew up in the UK during the 1980s had some Mastertronic/Codemasters/Firebird/etc games. Anyway, this might be because this was around the same time that the NES started doing really well in the US (**)- cartridge-based consoles being pretty unsuited to Mastertronic's business model- but I assume that the C64 market was still in reasonably good shape then.
(**) This contrasts with the UK, where (although the NES sold moderately (***)), the games market remained overwhelmingly computer-based until the early 1990s, when the Mega Drive (Genesis) and SNES started doing really well.
(***) Actually, the NES wasn't even dominant in its 8-bit console niche- it was outsold by the Sega Master System here, strange though that might seem (****) to the Americans or Japanese.
(****) How many levels of nested footnotes are too much?
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I admit I've never been huge on names, but I don't remember many of the rest of the folks knowing the names of the developers very well.
The names that got remembered, at least in the C64 scene, were the musicians.