they want from CRL for the license?

You have to understand that the phones of famous people do not ring. So if
you call you can get a deal for peanuts if you don't look rich and stupid.
We did that a lot. Successful people like youngsters, they like that; it's them 10 years before. They are normally generous. It's a shot to nothing
with the next up-and-coming star. Fear is the mind-killer.

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Q. How did you manage the company? Was everyone on friendly terms, or was everything pressured and maintained to tight deadlines?

CRL was a club for runaways. We were all teenagers sleeping under our
desks. There was a lot of pressure for sure, but deadlines came and went.
When it got serious you just didn't sleep for a month, delivering the code.
We stayed up all night for months getting stuff shipped. For some people
it was a dream, to others it was a nightmare. One guy's hair went white
during a particularly hard "death march." It went back to normal after,
though. That's pure Edgar Allen Poe. Friends wouldn't be the right word;
more like comrades in a war, in the same trench.

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Q. Was it disappointing receiving a bad game review, and did you feel any
of the negative reviews and comments (with hindsight) were actually
justified?

We didn't spend a lot on advertising. It was as simple as that. It was a corrupt world. Big advertisers got great reviews: they also went bust
fast. So we stayed innocent and survived longer.

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Q. Did a bad review affect the whole team's morale, or was it just a case
of, "Well, it's out there - let's move on to the next project?"

It was something that we kind of expected really. We were so young, other things were more important to us. Lots of the crew were used to rejection. Heck, why else would you live in a warehouse writing C64 games and sleeping
on foam fold out beds?

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Q. A number of people would send in demos. Were any of these demos ideas (should we say) "borrowed" to create full games?

Never, if we couldn't ship it we weren't interested. If we liked the ideas
we would try and contract the coder to finish his 'scrolly demo.' A lot of
cash went down the pan that way. But those were the breaks.

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Q. How was a game project run? Would an idea be passed around a team, or would mock screens be drawn, and who would then follow the thought process
to completed package? Were you very hands-on with the project, and did you
do any coding or art work?

People did what they wanted, we backed it with PR, a bit of money and a lot
of hope. In those days teams (in the modern sense) didn't exist. The
money was so small things had to be done on 4-5 figure amounts. A smash
hit was 20,000 copies. Piracy was rampant, so you only ever sold a copy
per pirate. I went to see a house and saw my game posters on the wall. We were everywhere! The games reached lots of corners but we didn't get the
sale. Piracy kept us on the edge of oblivion. That is just the way it
goes. No IP protection and you are toast. It was the beginning of the apocalypse of static IP.

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Q. How much was Richard O'Brien actually involved in The Rocky Horror Show game?

A lot, and not very much. We met him a few times and his genius made a big impression. The show is all the blue print you need. The Rocky guys were great... off the hook. They made a big impression on the people involved.
You have to recall not one of the team was out of their teens. It was a blessing from the Pope. Richard is a unique genius.

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Q. Can you tell our readers what was your favourite CRL game, and why?

That's hard... the one which will probably be seminal was ID, that Mel Croucher and I came up with. One mag said it was, the best computer game
ever. You can't argue with that. I was trying to do something like 25
years ahead of its time by creating a high art computer game range, Nu
Wave. It had ID, Deus ex Machina (MSX), Tubular Bells and Worms. We
really upset EA by releasing Worms, it was a work of brilliance and they
had funded it - then they snuffed it out. We took it up. In any event
NuWave is probably a good idea now, but maybe not. But if you don't have piracy protection the fans will love you as you die of starvation. Sadly that's the key to keep IP. People don't buy what they can steal, for all
the denial you will hear. That was the key to the console explosion. You
had to buy the cart. At least to begin with.

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Q. Tubular Bells was an interesting title. Was Mike Oldfield actually involved in the program's development?

No he wasn't, it was a giant rights clusterf*k, but it went ahead.

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Q. Did you get much feedback from people who bought the games?

A load for the adventure games and the wargames from CCS. We were too busy tumbling forwards to take much attention. We were forever making
payroll...

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Q. Were there any unfinished or unreleased titles, and what happened to
them?

Tons, they went to code heaven.

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Q. I presume it was difficult making the transition from 8-bit machines
like the C64 to 16-bit?

No, it was just the cost went up and the risks with it. You have to
remember all those companies went bust, it wasn't an 'if' it was a when.
The business was, and is still (to an extent) just a game of business
Russian Roulette. Even the platform holders went bust. Exactly who has
made money? Microsoft, Sony? Computer games - it's like the airline
business, semi-doomed by its own business mechanics. Show me the business model?

- - - - - - - - - -

Q. Do you have much material - design documents, artwork, tapes and disks
- left from the past?

Nope all gone... I thought I had a lot of artwork but that is missing too. Dagnabit, its going to be worth a ton.

- - - - - - - - - -

Q. Why was the company finally closed, and what prompted is final
shut-down?

Basically the company went bust when EA tore up its distribution contract
with the company. We were cheaper to kill than keep their word. It was
very ugly.

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Q. Do you look back at CRL with fond memories, and would you ever think
about starting another games company?

I feel like Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now... "the horror, the horror..."
but some people's memory gets rosier as time passes, some people's gets bleaker. I'm in the latter camp. It was historic, but in the end we
failed. I guess I should look at the legacy and maybe I will one day. The trouble with the computer games business is that you got so many knives in
the back, that it kind of ends up as the enduring memory. It was a kind of Hollywood Babylon II. The lifespan of a game is so short people were
forced to be very predatory and I guess I never adapted to that. I took it very personally. Computer games were the Last Chance Saloon for a lot of douche bags; my only excuse was I was too young to know better. The douche bags just rained down. I wonder if the biz is still that way (I suspect it is). Everyone went bust. That is the takeaway. I suspect little has
changed.

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Q. If you had the option to go back in time and start again, what would
you have done differently (with the benefit of hindsight)?

To me its like H.G. Wells' time machine - you can't change the outcome.
The girlfriend still dies whatever you do. If I had hindsight I'd take the newspapers back and would back the horses and the FTSE and be infinitely
rich. Corporately the answer was, "Sell your company, start a new one".
From a content point of view, it was the Ocean model. Cleave with
distribution and do film licenses, then do consoles early. Always hop to
the new format first. The big one would be move to Silicon Vall

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