Hello, and welcome to The Back Page Video Games Podcast. I’m Samuel Roberts, and I’m joined as ever by Matthew Castle. Hello. Matthew, we have a new special guest on the podcast. So, Will, would you like to introduce yourself? Hi, my name’s Will Porter, and once upon a time, I worked at a dear departed magazine called PC Zone. And since then, I’ve worked in the wider worlds of games development. Very exciting. So, yes, Will is the first PC Zone guest we’ve had on the podcast, and definitely we’ve had a lot of kind of consult-focused people come on to the show before. So nice to have someone who has that background, especially because I have a PC Gamer background, so we can talk a bit about that. Will, we’re just talking about this off air, but you’re like maybe the first guest we’ve had on who I’ve never met in person before. Yes, but I walked past you once upon a time in… You had a brief, a year or two, maybe Brighton period. Six months, yeah. Six months, and I walked past you in the street, but you looked very cross. You had a bit of a face on. So I thought even… I saw you, I thought, that’s that guy that often shares my opinions on Twitter. Because we have this weird thing, I was like, yeah, like we look kind of… Our brains match slightly. It’s you and Dan Marshall, who seems to like always like have the same like opinions about a lot of gaming things. And I thought, should I go over to him? But you just had that face that said, just don’t mess. So I just thought, I’ll leave it till another day. And today is that other day. Yeah, amazing. Four years down the line. So that’s good. So yeah, thank you so much for coming on, Will. We’re going to dig deep into your PC Zone and games media background. And then in the second half, we’re going to talk a bit about the games you’ve worked on because, you know, it’s quite an impressive little library of stuff you’ve worked on there. So thank you. So I suppose like to start then, Will, how did you get into games? What shaped your taste in the medium before you end up writing about it? There seems to be two sorts of people’s childhoods when you do these deep dives into things. And there’s the people that were allowed all the games in the world and they’re like, this console and that console. And they also have the people whose parents just hated games, refused to have them in. And that’s very much like my background. You will only have an educational PC. You only have like, do you know what I mean? And then you’re just desperate, you’re desperate to just feed yourself with any sort of sort of video game that you possibly can. And so I was very much that. And I guess I’ve been kicking back on that ever since, really, I think. And I mean, I was the BBC Micro kid, and then I was the Archimedes kid, always desperate to get on the entertainment side of that rather than the word processing. And then, I don’t know, when I was 16 or, no, it must have been a bit earlier. So basically, just in time for the Doom period, I managed to connive to have a PC, a 486, that ran things. And then I just gorged myself on PC Zone cover discs, really. That was when, you know, not really PC Gamer, I’m afraid, but it was always, well, unless, of course, they had something awesome on their cover disc, that was the way things worked those days. So yeah, so I was just basically going month to month and whatever appears on the shelves at Tesco. And that’s what started the ball rolling. Yeah, for sure. So you had a 486. Do you remember when you got your first graphics card? And was that a big deal for you? So I got it. They had some sort of the whole thing. What was it called? MMX technology or something? And there was a race, some of this Intel thing that really didn’t mean that much. For like, yeah, they had this thing called Pod. And like it wasn’t so much the graphics, the graphics card, it was a lot more like, oh, wow, it’s got CD-ROM drive and playing Rebel Assault. And, you know, going down, like it’s very sort of FMV, Beggars Canyon and stuff like that. And like, yeah, it just absolutely just blew my mind at the time. And like, I’d feel like back then, like, the fact is, you just were consuming absolutely anything. And like, so your taste was very, very wide. And it’d be like now, it’s just like, oh, this was made, I don’t know, like a pool game. At the time, you’re like, oh, my God, it’s Virtua Pool. I can play pool on my computer. And like everything was just amazing and new. I guess that’s partly the feeling of being an adolescent, right? But like, and like, just gorging yourself on this cool shit. But yeah, that was definitely my era. And I guess from that, I also got the love of the magazine, which ultimately would cast me down the pit on the journey that I’ve been on ever since. Why was it zoned to begin with and not gamer? Like, is it just let you pick one up over the other? Or is it purely by chance or? Well, I think to be honest with you, to be completely honest, Games Nerd is a big part of me. But I was also really big. And I’m too much with this, likely something that I share with you guys as well. But I was a real magazine nerd as well. And I think if you say now, I’m really into Lads Mags. Like, you know, that comes with a certain sub-ritions. But back then, stuff like, you know, the start of Loaded magazine, and to extend FHM, Maxim, Sky magazine, I used to really enjoy. I used to be buying all these magazines, and I just really, really, like, enjoyed the magazines. And the fact that you’re reading them, especially early loaded, you were like, there was this amazing club, a gang of people, just living out these crazy, crazy lives. And like, and putting, eventually, like, you know, creating this thing every month, this creation, and I was really into that. And I got on that, and the feeling of that is what I got from PC Zone, and not, which I didn’t get so much from PC Gamer. And it’s funny, even like, even at school, I’d have, I was a PC Zone kid, and there was this guy, Ray Hand, and he was like, he was like the PC Gamer kid. We’d have PC Zone versus PC Gamer arguments, even then at school, which is crazy, which is crazy to think that, you know, that would actually become my working career. It got weirdly tense on this podcast when Matthew suggested that PC Gamer didn’t have jokes in it in the 90s, and I got a little bit terse as I was defending it. That was embarrassingly PC Gamer of me. It did, but I’d argue that it didn’t have the same, like, you know, clubhouse, clubhouse feeling. It was probably, don’t get me wrong, it was there, and it was a good magazine, obviously it was a good magazine, it was an excellent magazine, but the whole, I think the difference, to be honest with you, is probably the differences between Bath Media and London Media. Right. I think because PC Zone was housed in the same, I mean, we’re probably spinning on a little bit in the conversation, but I’d come in, I’d come into a work day, I’d turn up a bit hungover, you know, because we’re in a 10 o’clock start time, roll it, roll it, roll it in half past 10. And there’d be like a, I don’t know, like a Maxim, like a Cover Girls casting thing. So you just wandered, you just wandered through the, through the thing, through this sort of, there’s this dense net of perfume and makeup and whatever, it would just be like, this is like this weird, like, you know, in the days of magazines that had a lot of power. It was this weird London media thing. And I feel that PC Zone was probably had a lot more of that than PC Gamer. And indeed the wider, maybe I’m wrong, but that’s certainly the sense I had. Yeah, I think that’s fair to say there’s a quiet bath energy that courses through the veins of futures mags to a large extent. So, yeah, I can sort of see how that would be the difference. So I guess, like, you know, you talk there about about starting a zone. What was your journey from reading games media to working in it? So I kind of like, as indeed, like I say, when I was at university, I kind of like sort of drifted out of games. But well, that’s a slight lie. I like I still like I didn’t actually have a particularly good PC, but I had like my friend Matt. I basically used to live in his room, like like playing on his on his PC. And that’s when I was getting the sort of games were like at that time with Deus Ex, Project IGI. We love Mafia, which we’ll talk about later on, I’m sure that that kind of that kind of era. And so I was still keeping my keeping my oar in. I was still like, you know, into games. It wasn’t a direct thing. I just wanted I just knew I wanted to go and work in magazines and you wanted to like media London. I didn’t quite know what so like so I spent a little while building up a bit like a bit of money by working for the university campus like I did doing such jobs as moving mattresses and cleaning flies out of lights and whatever, which was, you know, one of like a and then like a then I went and stayed like literally slept on my friend’s Adam and Lizzie’s floor in and did the way to get into the like magazines and media at that point, it sounds like I’m talking like Victorian times or something like that, you had to go and be be a runner or do unpaid work experience and stuff, stuff like that, just to become known and trusted to organization and wait until at some point where the big it can only be you sort of finger came out of the sky and all of a sudden you got a paid gig. Half of my time was I was doing this, actually like the best job I’ve ever had, unbelievably, was in the post room for KPMG at Canary Wharf, just a bit of a side to side, basically, too long didn’t read of this is like the lifts at Canary Wharf for the people that actually like work there in the post rooms and the cleaners or whatever, they take anything up to like 40 minutes or an hour to turn up, one of the business people in the lift. So basically, I was in the post room, I had to get important documents from the bottom. So I was just waiting at lifts all day, playing cards. And so basically, my job is to play cards in front of the lifts and meeting really fascinating, interesting people in this weird kind of and underneath Canary Wharf. It’s basically like Black Mesa. It’s just like this amazing underworld. Anyway, sorry, that’s not what we’re talking about today. But that was that was one half of my life. And the other half of my life was I worked for UIP Films Promotions, I worked for various pluggers that I’d had communications with because I worked on the student paper. And the magazine side I worked at did some work for like free work for Empire, Sony Artist Relations and the music. There’s a lot of redundancies. So basically, that whole building used to work on work experience basically. So I answered the phone, I answered the phone to like Jason Donovan about his next album. I answered the phone to Sharon Osborne who was pissed off because her daughter wasn’t being put up in a nice enough hotel. You know, all this shit. And I fucked up all the time. I was just this walking fuck up. I’m just like, you know, if you play peanuts, you get monkeys. If you play nothing, you get monkeys. But like, you know, like, so anyway, so then on the magazine side, so Empire magazine, Maxim magazine. So I was actually in the Dennis building. During that process, I emailed PC Zone. For some reason, PC Zone wasn’t really in my thoughts, games weren’t really in my thoughts. And then I thought, actually, no, I love PC Zone. Why haven’t I done that? So anyway, I PC Zone about doing like a work experience placement, and then they, Dave Woods, the then editor, kind of replied. And then but then I took ages to, such a stupid story. I take ages to reply to that because it was a really snowy day. And it was really icy. And so anyway, so I was out for a few days, but then in the reply to that, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, I sent a message, sent a very entertaining letter about all the way, all the reasons that I hadn’t replied and about all this very in details story about how some old ladies came to check if I was okay and they had to go to any and basically this email about me falling over made them laugh so much that they got me in for an interview for editorial assistant. And which I didn’t realize that they were advertising for. They said, we don’t have a working experience slot. You made us laugh with your story about falling over on your ass. Do you want to come in? So that’s basically, yeah. And then I went in, I had to serve out some time at Maxim because I’d agreed to work for them for three weeks for free. And they said, well, you can’t have him. So because I didn’t want to roughly pay this, I did three weeks at Maxim. Then I went. So yeah. And I had to interview with Jamie Sefton and Dave Woods. And the more I spoke, the more about my passion for the magazine from early on really started coming out. And I started talking about some of the old personalities and what I loved about the magazine, whatever. I basically got the job there and then, which didn’t stop Dave from not bothering to email me about it for about a month and a half. So basically I thought I’d fucked it for ages. And then I got the call. It was really exciting, actually, in that interview. They had just got proofs back for the reveal of Half Life 2. And halfway through, I think it was about to come out in a couple of days, and Jamie was like, should we show him, Dave? Should we show him? And then I was like, show me what? And clearly I’d passed some sort of test. And then all of a sudden this magazine came out, this hallowed creation had like the first screenshots of Half Life 2. That’s like blew my fucking mind. Absolutely brilliant. Imagine if you hadn’t got it after seeing that. What a thing to put in front of someone and then take away. But yeah, it took so long to get back to me. I just didn’t know what had happened. But as it was, that’s just the way the PC Zone was in those games. It was exactly the same with NGamer. A very similar interview. They didn’t have a secret Nintendo game to reveal to me, sadly. They wouldn’t even let me up to see The Offices. They said they were too dirty or too chaotic or something. We should have set alarm bells ringing. And then, yeah, I just didn’t hear from them for like two, three months, like the entire summer. And it was like, oh, well, I assume I didn’t get that. And then I eventually got a call and it was like, oh, yeah, I remember this. Yeah. Bit of a downgrade from Chad to Jason Donovan, though. Like, I don’t know how you were able to deal with that. You must have missed your old life doing that. So I suppose like what was that period like when you’re editorial assistant there, Will? You know, sort of like you mentioned on the PC Zone Lives podcast, there’s a lot of like fetching tea for people. I suppose like what did you learn and what was when did you get the opportunity to move up? Well, so there was, I mean, it was like it is a running joke, but it was actually true. Again, it feels like I’m talking about like me as some sort of Dickensian child off the streets are dragged into our jobs. But basically, I mean, on a on a on a modern magazine or games media set, there was no, you know, the fact that the fact that I was there, doing these, it wasn’t cost efficient at all, because I was even I didn’t obviously I didn’t actually see the advert for it, but even like the advert for this job had a picture of a kettle on it. And it was just like, and it was, you will make you make the tea. And like, and that was so I’d make I’d go around and make tea like two or three times a day. Are you good at making tea? Famously, I’m not because I like I bet on about a few months in I really scolded myself really badly on the on the things I had to go to A&E, like, because I was to hurt myself in the line of duty. Yeah, so my job my job was like, maybe it was worse. I mean, Martin called Martin when Martin Corda started. So that must have been two or three years before I did like literally, the editor Chris Anderson used to have a little bell that used to ring. And Corda’s nickname used to be Namelessly for complicated reasons. But he used to ring a bell and go Namelessly like that. And Martin had to go round to do the rounds. So I had to make the tea and had to go round. I’d get the thing around there was Marmite on toast. I had to go down the cafe and get Marmite on toast, but Vegemite on toast for Anne, for everybody. And yeah, and write the disk pages. That was me. That was my life. It was magical. But as you say, the on the job learning. Like I always remember like my first, my first, I wrote a half pager on a helicopter game called Red Shark. And as a denizen of a PC magazine, it was very, you’ll know, you’ll know, Sam’s very like Eastern European style. Like it was just one of those games. And yes, I wrote a half pager on that. But like then Martin called it like just he just printed it out and literally got a red pen out and just destroyed half of it. Gave it back to me. That probably one of the best things. Look, look at the time I was a bit put out. So I thought I’m a great writer. He’s gonna love this. But but what he did is just like literally stripped all the fat out of it. You know, this is good, but this is better. Do you know what I mean? And that’s one of the things I feel that a lot of people just get like dropped into the pit. These, you know, not in these days, obviously, written content somewhat on the way out or even gone, you know, as we talk. But like, but yeah, but people don’t really have that kind of like that. There was a real feeling of feeling of like training that I had that I had there. And like, it was a really big thing when I, you know, to be given my, my, you know, first, you know, trips and then like my first my first cover, my first lead review, stuff like that, if they felt like real rites of passage, and you really felt that you kind of like attained something when you got to that point. So yeah, so no, it was a weird mix of the the mundane and the brilliant. If you know what I mean, like that might be the early days of that. Yeah, absolutely. I think, yeah, I mean, it actually took a few years into my career till I had someone like Tony Ellis on PC Gamer properly strip my writing apart and be like, your sentences are too fucking long, you need to stop putting adjectives in here and waffling on. And but the first once you’ve heard it, you’re just you’re writing is permanently better from that point onwards. It’s worth the pain, you know. Oh, God, yeah. And then the thing is, again, it’s probably the same as you went when you’ve been shown that and what the more positive effect it has on you, you kind of really want to inflict it on others as well. Do you know what I mean? And I think, you know, Tony’s been praised the end of the earth on this podcast before. But that’s, you know, that’s the secret strength of PC Gamer, because that not only Tony himself, but you know, the the ethic that he instills in all the all the other PC Gamer writers is like, you know, it just infuses everything. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And I know Phil, you know, Phil there now has a massive respect for Tony. So like it, it continues on to this day, for sure. So how did you claw your way up from there, Will? Like how did you end up, you know, into proper writer and section editor positions from there? I think it’s, you know, people, people leave, don’t they? People go and then all of a sudden, like, you know, it’s like, well, should we hire outside? No. So like, you know, so basically, whenever, whenever someone else moved out, you know, you’re just kind of like, I’ve, I’ve, it’s always like, wherever I am, I have a habit of kind of like inflating to fill the space. Again, on this podcast, I’ve heard before, and it’s something that’s so right in that the secret best job in, in magazines is deputy editor. I think that was probably, when I got to that, that was probably when I was happiest, because you get a bit of power, but you don’t get in trouble. So like, and you don’t have to deal with any of the bullshit. Well, you do have to do, you have to deal with the results of the bullshit, but you know, you’re always going to take, take cover a little bit. We like, we master a really amazing kind of team of writers with, and as we, as we, as we went along. And I don’t know, so to an extent, it was just like, just the general process of hanging around. We created like really special bands of extraordinarily talented people fighting against, you know, increasingly difficult odds. You know, there’s an argument that says we, you know, both me and Jamie Thefton are very big aficionados of Viz Magazine. We probably went a bit too Viz. I think that’s probably a, that’s probably a valid criticism. Our mission became a bit more to entertain maybe than inform sometimes. I think that’s probably a valid, a valid criticism, but we just, we just all had brilliant, brilliant fun. As someone who like, you know, had to fight quite hard to get in there and get your foot in the door and then kind of claw your way up. Like, what was it like when you were in the position to kind of like bring people in? Like, did you kind of enjoy that process? Because it’s something I never got to do on NGamer anyway. Like, I joined as staff writer, and then basically no one was ever employed underneath me, even like all the way up to being editor. Like when I was editor, it was just me. But you were slightly ahead of us. So you were still in the era where you were recruiting teams and you had a big full team and you’ve hired some like absolutely amazing people on PC Zone. But like, did you like, did you enjoy that process? Did you find that like rewarding? I generally think that was actually the thing I enjoyed the most, easily. Steve Haggerty, who now does all manner of things, but he also does like the Regular Features Podcast. And he’s a very, you know, he’s on the top of Reddit with his Sims review every other month it seems. Like, he was the funny Irish kid off our forums. And so like, we basically, me and Susie, who was the Disc Editor and Review Editor after that, we just had this master plan. It’s like, we’ve got to get Steve over here, we’ve got to get him a job. Like, and we got him over on work experience. And like, sort of like, you know, he had all kinds of madcap adventures staying in the wrong, you know, accidentally booked a hostel in the sexy part of London. This very typical kind of like, timid Irishman abroad kind of thing. And like, but yeah, again, just hilarious writer and getting him in was just pretty funny because he knew he’d work so well. And he did. And like, and then Log, John Blythe, who you work with on Official Xbox. I was on Official Nintendo while he was on Official Xbox. That’s right. Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, yeah. I was used to look over and they’d be doing something weird for the, is it the breakdown of the videos they used to do? That’s right. Yeah, yeah. It’s funny because I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me telling the story basically. So we knew of Log. I think to be honest with you, I worked out, I’m pretty sure I was reading Log’s disappointment.com stuff maybe at school or university or wherever. I was aware of his stuff. And then like, and I think he contributed to Charlie Booker’s TV Go Home. So I was aware of him as like this internet presence. And basically, I think he applied for a job at our urging, but then absolutely fucked the interview. And then so then we were like, Oh, God, that’s annoying. So how perfect he is. And Jamie Udsefton was a bit like, like, you know, I wasn’t, you know, it didn’t really happen or whatever. So basically like, No, Jamie, you’ve got to have him in next time. Get him in. And he replied for a staff writer or something. And I think I think I just said, like Log had written a really funny blog about really needing a piss on the district line and having to wee into a pint glass that then overflowed or something. I’m sure it’s online. People should check it out. Provide links. Anyway, it was hilarious. And I was like, Jamie, when you go into this interview, one of the questions I want to be is I want you to ask him about what happens when you need to piss on the district line. So basically, I think, however, in the interview, the story came up because at my insistence, I can’t remember if it was log or Jamie. Basically, Jamie was just like crying laughing. It was just, yeah, he’s got the job. It was just that, you know, it’s just that funny. Going through the magazine at that time just literally was just an absolute joy. And that was that was when that was when the belt was starting to tighten as well. You know, things were things weren’t quite as rosy. I mean, compared to the compared to the dentist days, like the amount the amount of money that’s pissed away by PC Zone on the dentist days was just ludicrous compared to what we had to make a magazine on after the after the future takeover and certainly beyond that. I think we did like a two page, no, four page reality check about best gambling games. We were just like, oh, yeah, that’s like, we like that’s book. So we booked like a studio photographer. We booked like a like, like an actress lady to dress up as a croupier. And we hired out. We hired out. I think this must be thousands. But it’s not just for like a four page run. Yeah, that can go in the budget. I mean, it’s like it was like it was it was just nuts. And obviously, like, and then when we like, go to like a more of a money conch, you know, that’s probably one of the reasons that Dennis were quite anxious to give us the bin off. But yeah, so it was like the transfer from Dennis to future was, you know, it was a tricky one to navigate, even though it wasn’t, you know, high enough in the rest roster to really notice a lot of the more organisational stuff, I suppose. So when you become editor, one of the, you were the second to last editor, is that right, Will? Kind of third to last, but it gets a bit messy towards the end there. I’d call myself third to last. Right. No, maybe in fourth to last, because I think they had a caretaker for the last couple. Ah, gotcha. So on the PC Zone Lives podcast, I got the sense you’re a similar sort of editor to me, determined to make it good, but permanently stressed out and fighting a losing battle. You say the belt was being tightened around you and I imagine that got worse as things went on. So what made you step away ultimately? And, you know, what was your era like as editor? In any other era, I probably would have done it for a bit longer. But I was commuting a very long way, often with a hangover. I was, you know, yeah, there’s various organizational challenges that I won’t go into. But like I wasn’t creating what I loved as a kid, basically. I know I just didn’t want to be the one is made very clear to me. You’ll be putting this magazine in the ground. And then after that, you know, you can do whatever you want in the magical world of future publishing. You know, just all you have to do is like put the thing you really care about in the, you know, six feet under. Like, because that’s what happens to me, to be honest with you, like, you know, don’t, yeah, PC Zone after me actually last is like quite a while. And to be honest with you, the quality remains, you know, very high under the, under the, under the circumstances. So I don’t want to make it sound, but like, it just got, it just got to the point where it’s just like, well, it’s just literally just, just fuck it. Like, I think I basically had gone into, like, yet another budget cut meeting and I just looked at the publisher and said, right, well, if that’s the case, I’m just gonna, just gonna go. To be honest with you, like, that is a regret, a regret of mine is quite how sudden I did it. And like, I probably could have been a bit more dainty around it and it probably could have been a smooth, it could have been a far, far, far smoother transition process on who would eventually become the next editor. So I regret, I regret that, but like deeply, but at the same time, it’s just, I just hit a point where I was just like, there’s no, it can’t be, like, you know, I just can’t be, I can’t, I just can’t, if I can’t create what I want to create, and don’t get me wrong, I mean, the marketplace reality was marketplace reality. If the manner of which the, the ultimatums came made my reaction to it probably quite strong. And, and so yeah, and I was just like, it just, you know, it just felt like the journey had come to an end. Yeah. And like, so yeah, so just basically that really, and I was relatively sure that I could do, I could go freelance, I had many friends that had done that themselves. So I mean, if you do ride a mag out to the end, as I have a couple of times, you get what happens to me, which is, does everyone starts calling you the closer, which really fucking sucks. So yeah, you at least you don’t have that reputation. The other thing is as well, like everyone in their adult life has allowed one, burn your bridges, fuck this moment. I think like you learn a lot from doing that, regardless of whether you have regrets about it later or not. So the other thing I want to ask about with Zone is that there was a little, obviously there was a firm rivalry between Gamer and Zone as alluded to on earlier. And we talked about in the podcast a little bit before, but what form did that take when you worked on Zone? And what do you learn about the history of it while you’re on the Mac? When you’re on an outside perspective, it just seems nuts. But it was like utter, utter hatred, utter hatred, complete mistrust. This like this games of Game of Thrones style history of who fucking over people and they fucked us over for this. And so we did that these ways. And obviously, you talk to a PC Gamer person and we were the villains for this thing we did talk to us. They were the villains for that thing they did. And it went really, really good. Basically, like I’d say half the job in the, you know, so like in 2000 and so I joined Zone in 2003 or so. And then the future thing would probably have been, I don’t know, 2006 ish, maybe a bit like anyway, like everything in the early days of Zone, like half the job was fucking over PC Gamer, thinking about ways to fuck them over, or bidding, this strange bidding wars where like you go to PR and say, well, we’ll give you these pages on this big game and then we’ll do four pages on this, and you get this pages and they do this, do this, do this. Do you know what I mean? And you’d kind of be like bidding against each other. I don’t know how common that was on other magazines. I don’t know if it was just a thing that we had this because we had this bizarre Cold War situation. I don’t really know if it was that common, this other thing, but like he used to like work on these pitches for this, did these different big games. And then it was, yeah, like, but yeah, the, but the hatred was like, again, it’s not stuff I can really talk about for obvious reasons, but like it went, especially over things around Half-Life 2, it got very, very personal. People’s relationships were involved in the Maelstrom, you know, it was like just bizarre. And then so when I was the first person to ever actually befriend someone from PC Gamer and it became a really big thing, like, where are we’re like, so, you know, basically, I got pissed with Tim Edwards at this thing called Game Stars Live at the Docklands and actually, and I got really drunk and he had to future pay from hotel and so we actually shared a bed. Basically, we shared a bed and we top-tailed and I said, I’m coming to the office next day. It was this thing like, I shared a bed with someone from PC Gamer last night and everyone was like, what? Is it a proper like Romeo and Juliet Capulet Smolty Goose? It really was. It really was. But yeah, it was weird. So that was kind of like the first top of the Berlin Wall starting to crumble a little. But yeah, even after the takeover, when I was elder, I got this phone call from this guy, Mellow. Mellow worked on The Zone from the late 90s, maybe 2000, 2001. And he’s a real fixture of the PC Zone family hierarchy. I got this, you know, the bat phone rang and I answered it. And like, when I met him, it was Mellow. Will, it’s Mellow. And I was like, I apologize for the awful Northern accent. He’s like, why the fuck, why the fucking fuck is there a fucking house ad for fucking PC Gamer in my fucking Zone? Like that. And I was like, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Mellow, there’s nothing I can do. We’re owned by Future now. So it’s not fucking good enough, Will. It’s just like, it’s just like crazy. And I had to like, sort of placate him a bit. I was like, there’s nothing I can do. I can’t keep PC Gamer house ads out. So it’s just, this is the new way. It’s not fucking good enough. Sounds like, what was that BBC drama last year about the murder in the mining town between the scabs and the unionists? It sounds like that. That’s amazing because it’s funny when I worked on sort of single format mags and we got the rival mags in with their like reviews and their content, we go through it and then, you know, slam various features and review scores that they’d had it out as being wrong or the mag being rubbish, etc. But that was a more civilized age of like the late noughties. So I imagine, you know, this era of PC Zone, PC Gamer friction, it must have got a lot more colorful when they got something that you wanted and the mag came in, etc. Oh, totally. Yeah, there’s such a funny, such a common thing, isn’t it? Where like the magazine comes out and you just like that shit, shit, shit, boring, wrong. How’d they get that? How’d they get that? Arseholes. Do you know what I mean? It was always, it was always good fun. And to be honest with you, sometimes it went, you can look back on it now. And like, you know, PC Gamer were doing some really good stuff. Kieran was doing. I used to be quite caustic towards Kieran Gooden. I now think he’s one of the most talented people I know. But I think it’s just because when you’re, when you’re sat on the other side, the other side of the divide, Kieran is off doing his new games journalism thing, which is actually brilliant. But we were probably a little bit, you know, between ourselves, we were probably a little bit, you know, over-catty about it. But yeah, you know, you live and learn, you get older, you mellow. Did you have big rumbles whenever they got everyone together, like at the Christmas party? Well, by that point, it was more just big, big lovely hugs. Oh, nice. If you’re a bunch of people that you both work on PC Games magazines, turns out you’re actually quite similar. Oh, yeah. So actually, like, you know, like, so it was funny. Yeah, there was a, there was a notable for, you know, because obviously the end of the big Half-Life 2 wars where like everything got up to this amazing pitch of like anger and resentment and fucking over and all of a sudden we just got brought out and so it actually meant absolutely nothing. Apart from PC Gaming, who probably did a bit more, but never mind. Well, it was tough as well because you were editor and, you know, that, you know, so you start like in the, you know, like the early sort of mid-noughties and then you, by the time you leave it’s the late noughties. That was a particularly tough time for PC Gaming as well, right? So you had like mag sales being battered generally, you know, like recession sort of like kicking off as well and hurting mag sales. So I imagine like the PC Gaming landscape became, at a certain point, just felt more hostile and less favorable. Was there a bit of that too? Well, yeah, the thing is, it’s crazy to think about it like this now, but we were literally running features saying, is PC Gaming dead? That was the thing that people were saying, right? It’s like, oh, it’s mad to think of it now, but like that was the thing. And a lot of the times we were running what you’d call a console cover, really. Stuff like, I don’t know, prototype or whatever, I remember. So like, the actual PC exclusives were, you know, the PC exclusives were very valvey. Maybe in Unreal Tournament 3 or something, but otherwise, like, yeah, the Steam Boom hadn’t really properly got going yet. To be honest, I was thinking about this the day, how like my career in Steam have been really intertwined. Like, I remember, like, I was a big supporter of Steam, because when it first came in, like with Half-Life 2, it was this massive intrusion on gamers’ lives. There was a lot, because it was like an always online thing. We got so many angry phone calls, like about, because people were so angry they couldn’t run Half-Life 2, but the only phone number they had was us. So the day that Half-Life 2 came out, my phone was like this red heart with people wanting blood. Like, why didn’t you tell us about this or whatever? And then I used to get a lot of shit for writing pro Steam, like this is going to be a big thing, like it’s going to be an important thing. And then, and now it’s got to the point where it’s taken over. And, you know, a lot of my career with Project Zomboid is entirely Steam based. It’s like, it’s a weird thing that’s followed me through wherever I’ve been. But yeah, as you say, that period was a lull for magazines and everything. But also it was a lull for this weird lull for PC gaming, where it was just like the PC gaming renaissance was just gathering Steam. It hadn’t quite clicked and taken off yet. A bit of a half form thought this, but do you think if PC Zone had survived, that it would have fit the modern PC gaming age? I sometimes wonder this about NGamer was trying to be like old magazines at a time where Nintendo was really changing its whole vibe and was becoming this family company and it was a bit more clean cut. Do you think maybe PC Zone was just a particularly great fit for the kind of attitude of like 90s and early noughties PC gaming? I don’t know, I hate to say it, but yeah, I think it was a bit… I mean, even the name, I mean, PC Zone, it’s so 90s, isn’t it? A zone is just the concept of a zone. Exactly, it’s like a cyber… welcome to the cyber zone. Do you know what I mean? It’s really like… Yeah, I don’t… I think the space it occupies is now taken up by YouTubers with that kind of attitude. Yeah, I don’t think it would really fit now that well. Yeah, I feel like we’d have to have a different voice, whereas I think PC Gamer is a lot more adaptable. I mean, PC Gamer is a lot more authoritative. PC Gamer is essentially, you know, it’s the official magazine of PC Gaming, right? So I think that they can kind of bend their voice to modern times better than us. I mean, I don’t need to bang on about it, but time has changed a lot since 2006, 2007, and it’s changed even more since the 90s. I mean, PC Zone was born in the period of media access and ad mags and stuff like that, and there still was that sense of it, and we were talking to an ever-aging audience. So, yes, I hate to admit it. No, I don’t think there really is. I think there’s an audience, but I don’t think it’s a sustainable one these days. Right. Gotcha. I appreciate your honesty there. That’s totally where you’re coming from. The last thing I wanted to ask you, Will, before we take a break, is how do you feel games media change between the time you’re starting in games media and then moving on from it more permanently? Not just after Zone, but after you stop freelancing. How did that change in that entire period for you? The main change, and the one that maybe I struggle with the most, was just the fact that, so when you’re making a magazine to this monthly deadline and there’s a time delay, when you say, when you fuck up or do something that’s not great or you get a review score or whatever, it takes like three or four weeks for people to start moaning. And even then, and in those days they used to write you letters, right? And like the criticism might as well have been sent from the moon. But in the online age, you put a review out and it takes seconds for people to be coming at you, telling you what’s shit, what’s boring, what’s wrong, why you shouldn’t be good, you’re not good enough to have this job, or whatever, you know, the online landscape that we all know and love. And that just absolutely wasn’t for me. I became a little bit addicted to the online praise, and I became a little bit too put out by the online negativity. It just didn’t suit my brain. I mean, I don’t know if that’s something that you guys share. I mean, you’ve both gone from fringy stuff to online stuff. But my magazine brain didn’t and doesn’t fit the online brain. I don’t know how younger people who live in this kind of this maelstrom. I mean, I just can’t cope with it. Yeah, I think that there was maybe a softening of my writing I was doing, knowing it was going to be read by an online audience. And then maybe the writing wasn’t quite as sincere as it could be, as it would be just in the confines of print. I definitely had that. And you do build up a thicker skin towards it, but it’s also just constantly depressing. Matthew, how did you find that, you know, moving to online from print? I mean, mainly, like, you know, I flourished in an eco, in like the closed ecosystem of a magazine where I kind of knew what the rules were. And I knew, you know, if I assumed maybe wrongly that if you bought every issue and you know, you knew all the in jokes and you knew all the people. And exactly that that was a space I was really, really happy with. Like, weirdly, occasionally, like one of my reviews will get like a scan from NGamer or get tweeted by there’s an account that tweets like old magazines or whatever. And when I read some of it back, I’m like, this is just bizarre out of context. Like, this sounds very bad. But if you just took this text and put it up, it just wouldn’t work at all. And maybe part of that’s because it’s like some early bad writing. But a lot of it is, you know, I think I was really good at writing specifically for NGamer and then official Nintendo and then official Xbox. And just being online where, like, no one even knows the name of the writer often, it’s just a load of words to react to. Like that just, it’s never been my jam. Very familiar feeling there. Yeah, that makes sense, Will. So I suppose, like, let’s take a quick break here. We’ll come back and talk to you a bit about what you’ve been doing since you left Games Media because it’s pretty amazing and the sort of stuff you haven’t talked much on this podcast about. So yeah, we’ll be back in a moment. Welcome back to the podcast. So, having spoken a bit about PC Zone, Will’s had a pretty amazing career in game development and writing video games, so we’re gonna dive into that in this half. So, Will, curious to know how you made that transition after you left Zone and when you were working freelance. Like, I was doing some LinkedIn stalking for you, and saw the Shift 2 Unleashed Need for Speed game was your first writing gig. Can you talk about how that happened, and also your work on skins, which seem to be around the same time, but maybe a bit later? So, basically, after I left Zone, I spent, like… I was basically… My main freelance gig in the games world was… I basically seemed to become, like, the Call of Duty preview guy. So, basically, I wrote, you know, like… I just wrote Call of Duty stuff endlessly for Eurogamer and Edge and, like, the official magazines and the unofficial magazines. Once, went on one Call of Duty trip, and I wrote, like, three cover features and an Edge piece all for my hotel room while I was on the trip. But I’m very proud of it. But the thing is, you know, it’s old man, but also, like, that was absolutely quids in. It was great. But, like, you know, and I got free dinners, so, like… So, I was doing all that stuff, which, you know, which obviously I enjoyed. But then, at the same time, I was gradually trying to inch my way in to games development. I was often through these things. I guess there’s always an element of who you know. One of my good friends, Susie Wallace, who I mentioned before, she was the reviews editor on Zone. She went off to become a producer at Slightly Mad Studios. Then they were making… Then they got the, you know, the Need For Speed stuff from EA and then they needed somebody to come in and work on their tutorials and whatnot and like, you know, some of their commentary kind of stuff. So all of a sudden I became a car expert, which I’m not. I like was, you know, doing putting words in the mouths of famous racers like Vaughan Gittin Jr. He was like, he was the muscle car. I can’t remember what it was. What’s it called? When they do big skids around corners, I was like writing all like the writing, all like the these sort of things and working with people over at EA. And like, you know, it’s a real education to be honest with you, to like doing that, like got to learn what it was like, A, working with the developer, like at Slightly Mad, but also like, you know, with the wider EA kind of structure I got, it was a really good kind of balance of the two. And I also did loads of stuff at Slightly Mad that never really came out. I was like their big boss. Ian, at the time, he’s now like, you know, owned a million different companies, like since he’s now working on like a project car successor or something, since a project car has got a shit can by EA, I think. But that’s all, you know, it’s all out there. It’s all out there. That’s not a big secret, I don’t think. But like, but yeah, he would, I’d be there. I was a bit like, you know, Jabba the Hutt’s got his little dude slasher’s crumb. Like I was basically that, yeah. I was like that dude to Ian for a little while. Ian would like come up with game concepts, what he’d like. And I’d kind of write stuff to fit. And, you know, sometimes like they get some traction internally and, you know, they came a little thing. So I did lots of little projects, but like nothing ever quite caught light. Pitch various games and whatever in them as well, which is another good learning process. But ultimately all the resources had to go to like the shifts and then what would later, I guess, become the project cars things. So like, but still, no, you know, it’s all good. You know, obviously I’m still good mates with CZ and still good mates with like various people from that time. One of the guys that worked there on the interim, I used to talk to him over on the forum, he now does some stuff on Enzomboid actually. But like, yes, it was a really good kind of like, really good grounding, real like step through the doorway to show that I could be trusted in a way in that setting. So now I owe CZ a lot. It was actually CZ later on who got me onto No Man’s Sky as well. So I have that mental breakdown to blame her for. But like, you know, we’re still friends. So what about Skins? Will, how did you make that that lead? Because were you a credited writer? Were you sort of like a consulting producer? Is that right? Well, no, basically, again, it’s a PC Zone thing. Jamie Britton, who was the co-creator of Skins with his dad, he was on the same… Log used to have a forum called Belmsford, I think it was, which is basically like a bad taste Tumor forum. And Jamie used to be on that and became friends with Log. And Jamie was a massive PC Zone fan. And so I think Jamie also was a contributor to the Law of the Playground, which is the site and then book that Log used to do. And so Jamie just came along to a PC Zone pub night one time. I think we were in the Royal Vauxhall Tavern or something like that, I seem to remember. And yeah, so we became friends and he invited me into the writer’s room. I mean, to be honest with you, that’s like… I was in the writer’s room, but I’d say, did I contribute that much? I mainly sat there feeling way, way, way out of my element and really like, sort of, do I belong here? Especially because I turned out, I was in the writer’s room for Series 4, I think. And then a little bit of the character creation for the Series 5 when they kind of like, sort of, stood the switch around to what became like the third generation. So I turned up halfway through the second generation of the skins characters. And I did, so I kind of came up with a few things. Did I provide much direction? Probably not. But at the same time, I got a few bits in. I think I wrote a few gags. I think I wrote like a fake Reese Witherspoon parody that I overheard on a TV at some point. So I wrote that. I had a little bit of, and I kind of consulted on a little bit of one of the storylines, one of the mental health storylines of one of the characters. So that was just a me and Jamie thing. And then I kind of like sort of did some character pictures for the one of the characters that kind of got taken up slightly, but adapted for the third generation of skins. So like, but all I wasn’t, I wasn’t paid. It was just more of like, I did, I was just like, I was in the room, but I found it was an amazing, like learning process for me. Because I’m looking, I look back on it and being in that room and seeing them like map out the post-it notes, each character arc through the series and whatever. I mean, that’s still, that’s still something that we do now on Mafia Definitive Edition or whatever, even though obviously like, you know, the stars were some, some somewhat already aligned on that because of the nature of the project, but still like that working out, you know, each character’s journey and who’s doing what with this. You know, so like all of that stuff, I felt I look back on it. And I think even though I felt like a, you know, something of a spare brick at the wedding in that, in that, in that role, like I feel like I still learn an awful lot. So yeah, so no, so it was, it was, it was good. And so I got, I got, I got, I got a credit in it and whatever. It sounds good on LinkedIn. Yeah, you know, really, really exciting. I imagine it like really changes from project to project, but like what is a writer’s room like? Because I think in pop culture you see like 30 Rock and there’s a load of like funny people sitting around a table not ever seem to do any work. Like as a kind of creative space, is it, is it enjoyable? Is it like stressful? Is it like daunting to put forward an idea? Like what’s, what’s the vibe? I think that was, I found that very daunting that even because, because it’s, it’s a bit like coming into a room of people who already knew each other, respected each other and had past history. Right. And like, and then you kind of like the new guy and you kind of feel like you have something to prove. And because of that, you’re trying to prove yourself. And you know, sometimes you say dumb things. So I’d say like, but I think in a real collaborative space where like you’d know each other well and you don’t, you can take the criticism from the other person and you like and vice versa, it can feel really collaborative, but I think you just need to really foster the right atmosphere. It’s a bit like a cover line meeting. It’s a thing that’s so similar. Do you know a cover line meeting when like, in a cover line meeting, people understand that when you say something, it doesn’t matter if it’s shit. Do you know what I mean? Because you’re just trying to keep the ball rolling. But it’s oddly analogous to that. It’s something I’d like love to do personally, you know, like it’s definitely sort of a dream of mine. But at the same time, I keep thinking of like how raw it must be to like put something for us, especially in a space where it’s like something that’s meant to be funny. And the idea of like, here’s a joke, here’s a thing. And just like the idea of absolutely like eating it in that room in front of people. I would just, I don’t know. Especially like if you’re conscious, like that you haven’t said anything. I need to prove why I’m here, need to prove why I’m here, need to prove why I’m here. Yeah, that’s cool. That show was, you know, in, you know, sort of like a generation slightly younger than mine. That was a massive, massive show. So even just having a tiny bit of it is with your name on it is pretty cool. So Project Zomboid, Will, how did that come to be? And how did you end up getting involved with it? Because you were there from the start, right? And it was just, it just been pretty amazing to see it grow over time. Yeah. So I’m like the creative director on it. And it was so basically it came about through people I knew on in again on the on the what was then called Zombie Cow Forums. It’s Dan Marshall’s company. And then it’s now called Size Five. It’s done games like The Swindle. And what was the more recent one? He’s never going to forgive me if I can’t remember. What’s the Ben there? The latest Dan and Ben game? Lair of the Clockwork God, is that them? Yes, Lair of the Clockwork God. So that dude. We were all, I used to post on their forums. We were like a little happy gang. And Lemmy and Binky, Chris and Andy, they worked with Dan on a sex education game called Private. And it was so shortly after then, like they put some images of a game that they’d like. They were literally images. They just mock ups on Reddit saying, like, you know, we want to make this game. And it went really high and it really took off on Reddit. And all of a sudden they were making this game. They had like a thing for PayPal donations and whatever. I can’t remember if they came to me or I went to them about being a writer on it. And I think at the time I was at like, I think it was my slightly mad period. And yeah, and I was like, yeah, go for it. And then it just kind of went from there. And now it’s been 10 years-ish and we’re still doing it. And obviously, like this past Christmas, the one before, you know, it really went supernova because like we had lots of, we had like the revamp multiplayer. We had the new animations. We had the map expansion and whatever. And yeah, now it’s like, it’s gone from being like, you know, an indie game that had been persistently a bit popular. It’s an indie game that’s now very popular. So like it’s so it’s crazy. Is it crass to ask? Is it like life-changingly popular? Like it seems to have that kind. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it’s like it’s got super big. And also, you know, there’s a lot of us now as well. When I started, it was like four or five people. And now we’ve got people that work on it, you know, going around the world. So we’ve got three or four in England, we’ve got France, Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Singapore, Australia, Canada. We’ve got people like this. The sun never sets on the Pridges on Boyd Empire. So, yes, no, it’s like, you know, don’t get wrong. We’ve been in the long haul. So there’s some things that, you know, we can be criticized for, some things we can be praised for. But in the day, the current game that’s out there is like, you know, it’s really good. People really enjoy it. It’s crazy that all these reviews pop up of people that have played it for literally thousands upon thousands of hours. And you’re like, you know, just like, wow, I can’t believe. I mean, the longest I’ve played a game for is probably, I probably played Oblivion for like maybe 160 hours or something like that. You’ve got people that say, oh, I don’t play this game much. And they’re like, they’re on like 200 hours. I was like, oh, my God, how do you do this? How have we created something? You know, we’ve got people with Zomboid tattoos. We’ve had people that have met their spouses in game. We’ve got, you know, I mean, it’s just, it’s just, it’s just become this crazy, crazy thing that we don’t quite know how we’ve created it. But we have. That’s it. Like we, we pay £40 to our guests on this podcast, Will. So I’m sure that would be life changing for you to have that money considering the success of Project Zomboid. So look forward to that hitting your PayPal. So what does your work of it look like these days? And how do you divide your time between Project Zomboid and, you know, your other projects? I don’t know. I’m a bit weird in that, like I, oh, maybe this is a common thing, but I kind of need more than one thing in my head. So I keep saying I always need to kind of be in motion a little bit. And because of that, like I found that, and also to be honest with the Zomboid guys, they’ve been very forgiving when I’ve become a little bit less available at periods when I’ve been in kind of crunch mode on various other sort of studio games. But like so, but generally at the moment, I do like three, three and a half days a week on Zomboid, but while still always being available, like in my lull periods. But then I do like the minute, so like I’m doing there two days a week at Hangar 13. Just like helping out. I’m not like a leader, a senior here, but I’m just going to like chipping in where it’s helpful. And like various different things. So like during Zomboid’s ten year history, the big stuff I’ve been like, I’ve done Alien Isolation, I’ve done Name and Sky, and I’ve done Mafia Definitive Edition. So that’s the main. And now I’m just at Hangar 13. I can’t really say what I’m doing. In fact, I don’t know if I’m actually broadcasting live from Hangar 13 right now. So they’ve very kindly told me I could use one of their rooms so I can keep away from screaming children. Yeah, very exciting. So, okay, got to dig into a few of the things you mentioned there. So Alien Isolation, how did you get involved with that? And what was that like? Because it seemed like your role grew over time there, reading your LinkedIn. It started small, then kind of got bigger and bigger. So what was that process like working on such an amazing, I guess like kind of a cult game these days? Again, using the rule of who you know. So there’s two things. So I had enough, like I had the projects on board, kind of original tech demo, which kind of went big, quite big online. And like it was quite a good kind of like playable showcase of what I could do. So I think this guy who I think, I think Matthew, I’m sure you know Al Bickham, he was like a bit of a Barth institution. So there was a time when basically people from PC format and PC Gamer just went to work for Creative Assembly. There was like, I don’t know if that pipeline is still in place, but like there was like four or five people from PC Gamer had gone on to work there. And he was one of the Barth emigrates to Washington. So like I think he put the Brutus on Board demo in front of Al Hope, who was the Creative Director on Alien Isolation. And Al loves his indie games. So like that kind of got me through the door. I remember kind of like being like, Al just sat there with me in the room and said. So Will, what do you do? So I kind of ran through the basics. And then I was brought on to work as a bit of an overflow mission dialogue writer on Alien. And then over time just became quite embedded in the team. The longer I was there as a writer, you get this weird overview of the entire game, like from beginning to end that often people don’t because they’re just working in their little bit. So I think that my insight and things that my feedback and my work with the different mission designers, I’ve noticed kind of helped out really, I guess, and it made me hard to get rid of. And so I saw it through to the end. Don’t get me wrong, it was an inspirational development in a lot of ways. It was a difficult development in a lot of ways. It went through a lot of changes the time I was there. Some I can talk about like the change to first person, some I can’t, but ultimately everything happened to create the game that people know enough today. I know some stories that would turn Andy Kelly’s head on end, do you know what I mean? But you’ll never get it from me. Did the alien talk at one point? Well, it did because, again, this is like when the AI, the guy that designed the AI, the alien had his voice at one point, creeping down the corridor and it would be this, I can’t remember his name, but the alien would say something like, I’m thinking that he might be over there. I’m going to look in this crate. So at one point in time, the alien, yes, the alien did talk, but not for long. But yeah, you’d just walk up with our little writing, myself and Dion, the studio writer, our little den, used to be at the far end, as it often is in studios. The writers are kind of tucked away where they can be kept out of danger. We used to just walk down between our desks. You just used to look at the screens, and you used to sometimes just pinch yourself, just the amazing shit, the amazing spaceship’s effects, you know, like, ah, alien little stuff. And then constantly, one of the big things is we always had the original Alien movie, just playing 24-7, so any time you looked up, then there’d be the 1979 Alien just playing, just for, like, inspirations purposes. Right. And it was just, yeah, it was great. I was going to ask about that, because you hear about that, and the line is always, you know, this is just very inspiring for us, and this is, like, how deep we were. But, like, surely by the end of it, you’re like, I cannot watch Alien again, you know? Like, are you a big Alien head? I don’t really know. Yeah, yeah, I am. I like, and I love the movies. I’m probably more of an Alien head now I’ve worked in the game to initially. But, like, obviously, it was just, it was only, like, an ambient thing. You weren’t actually watching, watching it. You couldn’t hear the screens. You just find yourself idly looking at it. You know, it worked. It worked. And, yeah, no, it made some extraordinarily close friends on that project as well. And, you know, we’re still, you know, I’m still really good mates with Gary Napper, who was the launch, he was, like, one of the, like, the lead designer. And then, and John McKellen, who now heads up NoCo to be, like, you know, still really, Dion, who was the other writer. I’m seeing Suede with him on Monday, actually. You know, and it’s like, it was tough. Don’t get me wrong, but, like, you know, especially, you know, and there were times of which when you thought, you know, have we, have we fucked this? You know, and to see it go on to be the cult classic that it is, you know, it’s just really, it’s really gratifying. Like, really, like, really gratifying. Like, that it’s, like, got, it’s gained the cachet that it has. You were right to stop the alien from speaking its thoughts. That would have, that would have been bad in that game. I’m fairly sure that, fairly sure that Fox would have had a few, a few issues. Did you ever get to write on any of the stuff that the original cast sort of performed in, like, DLC? Yeah, I did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I wrote not all, but most of the audio diaries that you can pick up with the original cast. And I wrote, like, half of Scorny Wee with dialogue. Oh, wow. Which is that, and that again, that was really like the I never actually got to meet her, but like we were in the room when we dialled in to, I think she recorded in New York. Right. And so I think that’s where she’s based. But like, you know, one of those things where it’s like you hear things said about certain people and all the amazing things that you’ve heard about Scorny Wee and her relationship with the character Ripley is entirely true. I think there was a line where I can’t recall what we’d written, but like I think she was she was saying, I think the Ripley would say in talking to her daughter, I don’t think she’d say it this way. I think she’d talk about the creature in this way. And we were like, well, we’re not going to we’re not going to contradict you. We were like, literally. And she was really as professional as as as you’d expect as as at one with the Alien franchise as you’d expect. And like and and then, you know, and to be fair, it did get a better better read. But at one point, I was that she did she did one and we asked for I said, I think we can get a better version. So like I asked for a retake of one. All right. Obviously, I said to the others, I think I think I think you should probably get better than that because it’s quite early, early doors in the recording. And so so then, you know, so we asked the guy who was the guy who was the guy who was going to do a retake. And it came back again and it was awesome, even more awesome than the last one. So that’s so that’s the time when I asked the guy who asked the guy who asked the guy who asked the guy to ask the guy anyway. So anyway, that’s that’s that’s something I say at dinner parties. But that’s not true. I don’t I don’t read you dinner parties. But still, but still, it was it was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. And yeah, so yeah, it was great. You know, you lost a lot of hair on that project as well. But like, yeah, no, it was it was, you know, it was it was funny as well, because obviously, like when it first, you know, when the reviews first come out, you’re like, oh, shit, we have we dropped the ball or not. But like, it’s the time has been very kind to it as well. So like, I think that like when you when you when you bump, I bumped into the I was walking through Leamington and like bumped into this guy, Ian, who’s like the lead level designer. And like he said, are we fucking made a fucking cult classic, didn’t we, Will? Do you mean it’s that kind of thing? I mean, it’s like this amazing kind of like bond bonding process. And I think everyone, even though people find it like a hard, hard process that game. But I think everyone feels this is validation that we’ve created something really, really cool. Yeah. Can I ask a bit about the critical and commercial response at the time to the game? Because I was on PC Gamer, Andy Kelly gave it 93 and we were we gave a game of the year. We were convinced it was the best thing we played that year. It’s a massive game for me. Not everyone liked it that much. What was it like seeing that divide? So I’m at Centre Parks when the review embargo drops. And Wi-Fi is a bit spotty at Centre Parks. So I was out roaming, looking for somewhere to check what had happened, basically. And then I was in the Jardin des Sports. But then again, you had really positive stuff as well. I probably shouldn’t bang on about the IGN 5.9. It was gutting, but also, much as I disagree with the score, a lot of what you say isn’t entirely wrong. And again, maybe talking about the sort of thing that we talk about on this podcast, and the sort of thing that you talk about on this podcast, I can’t think of a much harder game to review to a deadline than Alien Isolation. Because I’m thinking about me as the reviewer. Because one of the, arguably, faults is it doesn’t really tell you when it’s going to end. It is long. It is challenging. And if I was trying to play this to completion to write about it, I can see how it could raise hackles. It’s something to pick up every now and again on one day complete. To play it beginning to end would be a marathon. So I think that, and I don’t know, but I wonder in some of the people that had a negative reaction, I wonder if that played into it. But yeah, it was a mixed day at Centre Parks when it went, especially when you kind of felt like… But it was odd, wasn’t it? It was odd how it had generally British and European seemed to like it more than the American press. It was an odd dichotomy. Yeah, quite a rare one. Okay, this will be my last question, Alien. You can’t talk too much about the behind the scenes stuff of it. I totally get that. But I was curious, was there ever talk of making it shorter? And I asked that because I always expected that game to be six to eight hours long, because a lot of your amnesias of the day and that sort of game tended to run short. Horror games still do, I think, to a large extent. And it was so much level that they built for that game, just so much world to explore, so many set pieces. Was there ever talk of shortening it or was it always like, no, it has to have this epic sweep to it? Something that plays into that is, like, I think it was relatively hard to anticipate how long it would actually be until the save game mechanic was in and working, if you know what I mean. So I think that, like, until you actually had players running through it, I think it was, yes, it was always intended to be a long game, give a lot of bang for the buck. But I think that, like, until difficulty levels were set and save game and stuff was in, it was quite hard to actually throw a dart and say exactly how long it was going to be. So I’d say that probably played into how long it was. But, you know, other opinions are available on that one. I mean, that’s more of a question for Gary and Al. But I’d say that it was quite hard to tell how long it was actually going to be until you knew quite what the difficulty curve was going to be and how people would play it in terms of the save system. Yeah, OK, interesting. So I felt like I was asking a journal question then a little bit. So moving on to Mafia then. So Mafia Definitive Edition, you worked on the story for that alongside Hangar 13’s Hayden Blackman. Mafia was a huge PC title in the early noughties and shortly, right around the time you got onto Zone, I guess, it became big. So I imagine this is a bit of a dream gig. What can you say about working on that game? Well, it was just like, yeah, obviously, like, I think Mafia was, I think I probably played the original, yeah, I think it was like a university kind of time. I remember playing it, I remember playing it like properly at my desk at PC Zone. And I met the executive producer on, you know, I eventually called it Scotch because that was its code name, but like on Mafia Definitive Edition. So I think I met him as a journalist many, many, many, many years ago. And he clearly kept tabs on where I was. So I just got this kind of mystery email one day asking, and they were setting up Hangar 13 in Brighton. They clearly was aware that I was in the vicinity. And at the time I was thinking that I probably should say no to this. But because I knew because the limits of what we were doing were quite fixed. You know what I mean? My job was essentially filling in the gaps of an existing storyline. And Hayden had done a lot of heavy lifting in terms of like 90% of the cutscenes. Basically, so Hayden wrote 90% of the cutscenes. And he’s the guy that basically worked out which way, what difference is and what sort of improvements, if indeed you think there are improvements, had been made to the initial story. My stuff was mission dialogue, in-car dialogue, because obviously there wasn’t any chatting in the cars back in the day, pickups, AIVO, basically any kind of other kind of world building kind of stuff. For me, in a lot of ways, it was a perfect project, because my thing I love the most is working with individual mission designers, and as they can iterate and then bouncing ideas about what is possible within the game space. Which I got, and again, I think the journal pass really helps in that as well, because we’re so used to walking through A, preview code, and B, walking through stuff with an analytical eye thinking about am I having fun or not, or what do I know, what don’t I know, what should I know. And so I think the journal background really helps there. Anyway, so yeah, it’s a massive, it was really good, it was just the perfect thing for me at the time, and yeah, I really like the people. How do you get your head into that period voice? Because it’s easily parodied, you know, they’re the kind of gangsters, this little schtick. Do you just, did you like watch loads of films or do you have a natural interest in the period? What’s that like? Well, I did, I did have a interest in the period from my A level days. I did a lot of stuff in the Great Depression and whatever. And I sort of, I did, I bought, by building on that, I bought loads of books about the period. I did research, lots of gangstery stuff. I mean, obviously, like, as I said, the overall storyline was there. So it was more about the tone and the world that I was picking up on. And I had like a little, I built myself like a spreadsheet of period, period dialogue. And I’d kind of like sort of say whenever I was writing, I’d have that open and I’d pick out different bits and try to make, you know, like, like, and so you’d have like Sam saying, my favorite line is, Sam says at one point, where they get on the boat, Sam says, don’t worry, it’ll go smooth like eggs in coffee. Just stuff like that. I kind of like, so I just kind of like did research and whatever. And like, you know, as long as they sound like human beings and you don’t labor the point and, you know, that the actors 99 percent of what makes things work is one new thing is you learn is you get a good actor and, you know, it doesn’t as long as you don’t like pigeonhole them too much with with bump and technical stuff. You get a good actor can make anything sound good. I’ve been relying on that for most of my career. Yeah, so no, it’s good. No, like, I don’t know if you guys played it. Yeah, I finished it. Yeah, I think we exchanged a few messages when I was playing it. Yes, you did. You did. Yes. Yes. Yes. I’m sorry. I’d forgotten. I just didn’t know if I could say that on here, but I felt very self conscious about not enjoying it properly when you’re messaging me like, oh, shit, I’m not paying enough attention to the changes he’s made. Yeah, it was really good. That was a really like, like, absolutely exactly what you’d want from an update to a game that old, I think, you know, I know it’s called definitive edition, but at the same time, the original was so good and so groundbreaking. And it also does some kind of almost like Deus Exy, very intricate, like PC-ish of the time stuff that our remake necessarily does doesn’t. So like, I think I’d always say, yeah, what we did is really good. But also, like, the original is still, you know, if you don’t mind playing an older PC game, it’s still absolutely brilliant. And like, and it does so many cool and intricate things. It’s interesting working on a game that’s like obviously very fondly remembered by, you know, gentlemen of a certain age, as us three are. But like, also, like, it’s like a it’s a real cultural touchstone in the Czech Republic, because like it was like a massive artistic and cultural feat that they created. And it was really like really trendsetting, you know, and that was after a period where a lot of a lot of what they’re creating in the Czech Republic was kind of like in the dark because of the Iron Curtain or whatever. And there’s it’s still massively, massively, massively popular and like really, really, really special and extraordinarily important to them. So like, you know, you’re you’re very conscious of like, of like, not pissing, you know, bear in mind and not these people, the people that work on the game as well. Right. So like, you’re you’re conscious of that, that that element as well. I think we got a lot of things right, right there as well. I think, you know, something is wrong as well. But like, you know, that’s just that that’s that’s the nature of games and, you know, in making modern game too. And I think that, yeah, ultimately, I’m very proud of our work on it. Yeah, absolutely. I share your enthusiasm for the original Mafia. Certainly, like, you know, it was a contemporary of GTA 3, but did a bunch of things better than it. It looked phenomenal. The smoke rings at the time and so singular and like, you know, just daring to have old cars that steered quite different, you know, quite a difficult way. And yeah, just like you say, very PC of its time, but in the best possible way. Well, here’s something. Here’s something that’s interesting. I don’t like is the fact that like I was talking to a guy relatively recently and apparently like GTA 3 and Mafia, there was a period where they were both being tested in the same building, different floors in the same building. And basically, like, you know, the people, the testers and the people working there would just be like on their bag breaks, thinking, just knowing literally that the future of gaming was behind them. You know, the idea like they were just going into work. They were on this mind blowing stuff, just aware that like, you know, on different, you know, what is one big on console, one big on PC? Like, but they just do this like they’re just they’re just they’re like knowing that they’re on the forefront of something absolutely massive. Yeah, I just love that. Just like what an amazing image. That’s amazing. What a building to be in at the time, I’m sure. Oh, that’s awesome. So I suppose like my last question here is quite weird, Will. But I suppose I’m like, I think me and Matthew are probably both slightly envious of your career because it is pretty. Oh, pretty 100 percent. That’s the thing we’re like just sort of not saying. But I suppose it is still work, right? Like, you know, you say you kind of you lost a few hairs working in isolation. The games are not easy to make. But do you enjoy the process of writing games? So what are the challenges and what are the fun parts for you? I don’t know. It’s hard, man, because like getting ideas in front of an amazingly talented team of things, things like form, and you can say a little bit that a little bit that’s mine. Do you know what I mean? Like that’s a special feeling. It’s a bit like when you first get the magazine back. Do you know what I mean? And I feel like a lot of what I like in the teams I’ve worked in, like a lot of the time we felt like scrappy underdogs and it else felt quite PC zone-y. Like Alien Isolation, we certainly, you know, it was a big team. We had a lot to prove, you know, a lot of it was we were learning on the go. You know, we had like a fixed vision and whatever and no man’s sky. Clearly, you know, you know, scrappy underdogs a lot to prove. Scotch, we were like, you know, we were like the Scotch was a mafia. Obviously, we were like, you know, we were like a relative, like relative startup here, here in Brighton. You know, we weren’t like this. There were two teams here here at the time. You know, we were like, again, it felt like very small, even though like we were in a big, you know, 2K monster of a corporation overall. And I really like that feeling of being part of a creative team. And you do get, and that’s that’s been amazing all the way through. But at the same time, you know, dip into a No Man’s Sky story. So like, you know, the crunch on No Man’s Sky was hard. And like, I’m sure Sean won’t mind me telling this story. I’ve got a lot of respect for him. We’re like, you know, we’re not tight these days. We will give each other a nice hug when we see each other and have a reminisce about the crazy times. But like I was on, we were heading down to the Isle of Wight, I’d say on holiday, but I was going to be commuting from the Isle of Wight to Guildford still. And so it was me, my wife and my son, who would have been about four at that time. And at one point we got to a certain stop and the train went ding, You know, change here for somewhere, somewhere, Guilford. And Aaron just looked at me, my son. He’s like, Daddy, Guilford. Like the city man. He’s called Sean the city man. So you need to go to Guilford, Daddy. You need to go to the city man. Like, and I was just like, no, so I don’t have to go to the city man. It’s like, no. All of a sudden, we were in this role play, when like, because Aaron had a big problem with Sean, because he was like the city man who made me work. All of a sudden, we went into this role play, where like, Aaron was like the city man, Sean, and I was daddy. And I was like, say, I’ve got to do more work. So he says, no, you can’t. Aaron is already in bed. He has had his milk and he’s had his stories, and he’s already asleep. You need to do work. Do you know what I mean? But that was the situation we were in on No Man’s Sky. I bear no ill will. But I think that’s an indication of what ridiculous overwork and my crunchy stuff can do. It did impact on my family stuff. It did impact on me mentally afterwards as well, because it was just such a crazy, crazy, crazy time. I’d literally be there and I’d be like, I’d think that I’d be standing next to Jordan playthrough or something. I’d think that my internal monologue was internal, but I’d just be there just talking out loud and they’re like, you’re talking Will. I was like, I guess I am. I do stuff like that. The other thing about crunch, and I know you guys will appreciate this. The other thing about, this is an Alien Isolation thing as well, is that after you’ve worked on a game when you were crunching hard, Indian takeaways and takeaways in general just feel not special. They’re like, we’re afterwords. So you’re basically having a curry, or a Chinese like every other night. At first, you’re like, oh my God, this is amazing. I’m having a takeaway every night. And then after about a month, you’re like, I can’t have another chicken boon. And then for like six months after, my wife’s like, should I get a takeaway tonight? I’m just like, no. I’ll just eat bread. The true dark side of crunch that no one talks about. It kills your taste for chow mein. Exactly. That’s a shocker. And then you look back and like the poor old, these days you can just do it on Just Eat or whatever, I’m sure. But in those days, I remember Ollie when the producer on Alien and his job every night would just be to be on the phone with the restaurant manager for about 20 minutes and just going, one chicken chow mein, two egg rice. Do you know what I mean? Do you know what I mean? Just like this endless, endless thing. He’s a hot shot producer, but his main duty every night was just to feed us via the takeaway bat phone. He’s the Marmite toast boy. Yes, mirroring your early days on Zone quite nicely there. Are you better looking after yourself these days, Will? I am. I’m very fond of Hangar 13. They’ve had some ructions in more recent times, but to be honest with you, I’ve never worked with more professional people, brilliant producers. All the projects I worked on, excellent time management. Yeah, I couldn’t sing their praises high enough, to be honest with you. Big fan of them. And that’s, by the way, that’s not to any detrimentary people I worked with before. A lot of that’s just, you know, product of the situations that we were in and the expectations and also the pressure to create something as good as was required. But like, it’s certainly, you know, it’s certainly nice to be working somewhere where, you know, I’m sure things will hot up. But like, you know, but the general structure of things is more to date. And we’ve also got to a point where on Zomboid, where everyone knows their role and stuff, you know, people are happy, but, you know, people are always saying that we’re slow. And that’s, you know, that’s a fair criticism, but also we’re not burning out either. And we do, you know, we do like come up with the goods, you know, after a fashion. Results speak for themselves clearly. So, yeah. Well, awesome. That was everything we wanted to ask you, I think, Will. Is there anything you wanted to sort of plug while you’re on here? I mean, you know, all those computer games are available on all good storefronts. But is there anything else you wanted to mention? I think I’d just like to say as a bit of a fanboy of the podcast, what a bit of a thank you to both of you, you know, also from a lot of the, a lot of the other people listening, I’m sure. I mean, you guys have really become a fixture in my, in my brain space over the part, you know, since like the lockdown or whatever. And I just think that what you do here is really good and I just really enjoy it. So thank you very much from myself and I’m sure a lot of other people listening today. Oh, that’s really, that’s really kind of you, sir, actually bowled me over slightly. So that’s all right. Well, and I’ll get the get the 40 quid on the last week. Yeah, no, thanks. Well, that’s very kind of you. We’re trying to have like one mad guest on a month this year because we think that really sort of those the episodes that people still love the most. So, yeah, thanks so much for coming on. So where can people find you on social media? I’m Batspinks on Twitter, but I have a weird like, technically, I’m off Twitter, but at the moment, I kind of I’m kind of on, I find myself gradually drawn back to it like a fly to the fly paper, to like a moth to the moth to the naked flame. So I’m on there right now. Whether I’m on it again next week, I don’t know. We’ll find out. It will be a bit of a Russian roulette. Yeah, you’re the only one who’s ever said to me on Twitter, AFK putting my kid to bed, which was, I’ve never had that in a DM before. So, yeah, if you’d like to follow the podcast on social media, we’re BackpagePod on Twitter and BackpageGames at gmail.com. If you’d like to email us, we have a Patreon too, at patreon.com/backpagepod. Matthew, where can people find you? At MrBazzill underscore Pesty. Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on, Will, and remember that next week. Goodbye.