65(a) Osbourne Road, Portsmouth, PO5
Most of the pages of this blog exist because they give me a warm hug of nostalgia. "I loved Highway Encounter," etc, etc, etc. But occasionally things get more complicated. Newsfield, for example, was supposed to be my lovely stroll down memory lane but instead forced me to consider the difference between the job of my dreams and the realities of working with actual fallible humans. Automata is also less straightforward. Positioned deliberately outside the mainstream of UK software, they were, and remain, a contradiction. A counterculture business. Simultaneously obscure and well known. Lionised, today, and yet my memory is of not liking them much. Was I a stuffy teen conformist, unable to cope with anything which didn't fit into my plastic-fantastic routine of Top of the Pops on Thursday and Howard's Way on Sunday? Am I, as Star Trek once put it, Herbert?
The easy stuff first. Automata (Cartography) Limited was registered with Companies House on 18 Nov 1977. Company number 01339467. They...
No. This isn't going to work. I'm a very long way from being the first person to shine a light on Automata. You can read about them here and here and here and here and here and here and here or if you prefer videos you can go here or here or here. They are a well documented obscure software house.
It's all been said. Pimania. Deus Ex Machina. The Piman. Mel Croucher. Sealink ferries. Christian Penfold. Dorothy's Wool Shop. A bit of a cult. Non violent games. I have nothing new to add. Apart from two pictures from Portsmouth and some navel gazing. Obviously I'm still going ahead but a linear history is a non-starter. I'm swerving into the postmodern lane. I'm not going to write about Automata, I'm going to write about writing about Automata. This is going to be a disaster. This is going to be great. This is going to be awful. Emotions are mixed.
"We pay our way, and we expect others to do so as well. If they don't, bollocks to them."
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| June 2024 |
27 Highland Road, Portsmouth, PO9
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| June 2024 |
I know that one of the many interviews with Automata includes a photograph of Christian Penfold and Mel Croucher in their Piman and Uncle Groucho disguises. They are standing on a balcony waving. I don't have the picture to hand (disorganisation) and I don't know if it was round the back of Osbourne Road or round the back of Highland Road. I have a picture of the rear of Osbourne Road. I try to get round the back of Highland Road but it's not possible. As I wander backwards and forwards passed the parade of shops, I accidentally attract the attention of the man in the chair again. He is enjoying the evening sun like everyone in Portsmouth, and he asks me what I'm looking for. We have a chat as I do my usual thing of keeping it vague, explaining I'm writing an article about a company who used to be based here. As I do this, I gesture at 27 Highland Road and realise I'm parked dead opposite it, I didn't notice when I got out and crossed the road. It's a dentist surgery now, with another red car parked in front. Red is my nemesis colour today. "Now you'll get a chance to watch me try and pull out," I say to the man in the chair. Am I taking part in banter? I walk back to my car, snap a picture, and give the man a cheerful wave goodbye. I am the most interesting thing that has happened to him this evening, so far. I pull out without too much incident and drive off. I'm heading along the coast to Southampton.
"Everybody rips off everybody else's ideas. Fat grow the lawyers but what is the point?"
01/09/2024. I wrote the introduction before I'd decided on the new format. I've also added in the trip to Portsmouth in chronological order. I do not consider this to be a cheat.
Since then, I've spent a couple of hours looking at various bits of online material. My generic lazy-bastard starting point is, as always, Wikipedia. There's a lot of information on Automata. Far more than I would have expected but I have to keep reminding myself that my memories of the company as small and unsuccessful are in conflict with the modern view of them as pioneering and influential. Automata can be both, it just depends if you are standing in the past or the present. I start with the Wikipedia page for Mel Croucher's passion project Deus Ex Machina The game is described as a "1984 pseudo-multimedia computer game" the pseudo tag amuses me; I think it can be safely dropped. Deus Ex Machina leads me to the Wikipedia page for Mel Croucher and from there I jump to the page for the 1982 game Pimania which links to a page for a 1983 game called My Name Is Uncle Groucho, You Win a Fat Cigar. Finally I head to the page for Automata itself and click on a link to a SINCLAIR USER profile from October 1985 called "Ballard of the Pi man." I've read this before. It's a remarkable, bitter interview and reads partially as an obituary for the company. It must have taken place between January and April 1985, after the failure of Deus Ex Machina and before Mel Croucher left. What catches my attention is a claim that the pair:
...produced a show for the Independent Radio Authority called Whitbread Quiz Time, the drinking man's answer to Mastermind.
That's a good starting point. I like digging out obscure stuff so I visit The Television and Radio Database. The results are disappointing. None. I get a slightly better hit rate from newspapers.com but the three listings I find for Radio Victory, the Independent Local Radio station for Portsmouth, all date from 1982. Which is too late. Mel Croucher and Christian Penfold's contributions would have been pre-1981. I get a manageable list of results from Google. A 2018 interview with Mel Croucher. That will be useful later. A medium.com article called When Games And Art Collide — Recalling Deus Ex Machina. Finally melcroucher.com is, as you'd expect, a goldmine. There's a generous 50 page preview of a book called DEUS EX MACHINA THE BEST GAME YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED IN YOUR LIFE.
I quickly browse the text. Skimming over sections on PiMania, My Name Is Uncle Groucho You Win A Fat Cigar, and Deus Ex Machina. Then I get distracted and read in detail about a 1983 game called Go To Jail and the subsequent legal action from Waddingtons on the grounds that it infringed their copyright on Monopoly. Or to put it another way, their monopoly on Monopoly.
Automata's game was originally called Automonopli. When the game went on sale in the summer of 1983, the response from Waddingtons was swift. Automata agreed to change the name of the game and the matter appeared to end there until late 1983 when Waddingtons suddenly began legal proceedings.
POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY (22 December to 4 January 1984 page 5) noted:
Although Waddingtons intends to proceed with its court action in January it has now agreed to drop its injunction attempt pending discussions between the two companies this Monday, December 19
At the end of January, Automata used their weekly PCW back page advert to print a statement updating customers and the industry on what was happening.
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| POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY 19-25 January 1984 page 68 |
WITHOUT PREJUDICE
At the time of writing, the case of AUTOMATA U.K. LTD. versus WADDINGTONS GAMES LTD. (see Popular Computing Weekly Dec. 22nd 1983) is unresolved, regarding our computer game "GO TO JAIL". We hereby declare that "GO TO JAIL" for 48K Spectrum, is back on the market, in brand new packaging & reformatted loader display, at £6. We apologise to anyone waiting copies. Whilst Waddington's Injunction that was threatened for Dec. 16th 1983 was withdrawn, this important Test Case is still due to come before the High Court in the near future. AUTOMATA publicly thanks the following Companies and Individuals for their solidarity in helping us fight for the rights of the Software Industry, and for putting their money where their mouth is. We hope 1984 continues to be the Year of Cooperation within the Industry. We will announce the outcome of this legal battle as soon as it has been resolved.
MANY THANKS TO;
Tansoft, PSS Software, Fox Electronics, M.C. Lothlorien, P. Fodrio, Dominic Sparks, Michael Bere, Adam Hulbert, CDS Microsystems, Shards Software, Lee Spencer, Artic, I. Greeves, Prentice Hall, Spectadraw, Paul Goggin, Tim Wreford, Phillip Bragg, Greg Jewell, D. Malsey, Temptation Software, M. Davies, Britannia Software, IMS Software, Salamander Software, DK'Tronics, R & R Software, Bug-Byte, A & F, Mark Tilson, David Stevens, Microgen, Your Computer, MK83, Rabbit Software, JD Tronica, Mogul, Dangerous Dave, Xavier Wierdo, Mark & Ruth Allen, Lance Suchard, Crystal Computing, CRL, Mine of Information, Computasolve, Boris Allen, The Staines & Stanwell Computer Club, J. Bowers, Paul Laird, D. Barnett, Malcolm Jarvis, Computer Choice, David Lawrence, Simon Shoester, All 5oftware, Pac-man, Paul Cooper, Silversoft, J. Goldberg, J.Rove, J. Sherman, Mike O'Sullivan, Microchip Micky, Micromania, S. Shooter, special thanks to Nigel Backhurst; the Computer Trade.
I admire Automata's gall. Thumbing their nose at Waddingtons and advertising that the game remains on sale. It's disappointing, I can't find any information on the outcome of the case. Mel Croucher, in DEUS EX MACHINA THE BEST GAME YOU'VE NEVER PLAYED IN YOUR LIFE, talks about the case but it's not clear if he's talking about legal action after the original 1983 release or the December writ. It's most likely the summer of 1983 because that matches up with a four panel comic on the back page of PCW, 21-27 July 1983; 'GO TO JAIL' legal sensation.
Mel Croucher's description of the court action is a proper David and Goliath story. What Goliath didn't know was that David was armed with legal advice from Baroness Barbara Hammet le Brun (French baroness, painter, musician and recreational hacker), Edward de Bono (physician and commentator), and Michael Mansfield (barrister and and self-described "radical lawyer"). This unlikely team was assembled following advice from Robert Maxwell and Mirror Group Newspapers. I find myself wondering, how much of this is true?
Mel Croucher, in his Deus Ex Machina book, describes Mirror Group Newspapers sniffing around prior to setting up Mirrorsoft. Presumably they were looking to quickly set up a software company by rolling up several smaller ones, as Argus did with Quicksilva. At the time Automata had a high profile on the back of Pimania. Automata said no thanks but Mel Croucher then made use of his Mirror Group contacts (Maxwell hated Waddingtons having tried and failed to take them over a couple of times) to assemble his unlikely team. Reading all of this, appears to have:
a) Chutzpah coming out of his wazoo.
b) Charisma.
One of the things I've picked up from researching Automata is that people really seem to like Mel Croucher. Even when he's being blisteringly rude about them. Look at the list of companies and individuals who helped out Automata when Waddingtons struck back at Christmas 1983. I keep coming across stories which only seem to happen because people really like Mel Croucher. Coming in two paragraphs time is a story about how he got his hare-brained quiz/computer programme idea on the radio. And, after Mel Croucher worked with Jon Pertwee on Deus Ex Machina, the pair wrote a book together.
Mel writes, "Waddingtons halted the case." However, I can't find a subsequent announcement from Automata. I wonder if the case reached an uneasy stalemate which so often seems to be the outcome of this sort of legal action. I get the impression as 1984 moved on that neither of the pair were interested in revisiting what must have been a stressful time or disrupting the legal ceasefire. Christian Penfold is more focused on the business, and Mel Croucher is off working on Deus Ex Machina.
This section is supposed to be about Whitbread not Waddingtons. Mel Croucher's Deus Ex book has a surprisingly huge section on Whitbread Quiz Time; ie, more than a paragraph. SINCLAIR USER was wrong. Christian Penfold wasn't involved. This was in 1977, before Penfold enters the Automata story. Mel's sister was a newsreader on Radio Victory and her boss was someone Mel Croucher went to school with:
I went to him with an idea. He didn't think it would do lasting damage to his reputation, and was kind enough to let me broadcast computer data over the AM and FM wavebands after regular broadcasting hours. My idea was that sizeable numbers of computer owners across the South of England would receive my signals through their radio sets and get so excited by the concept of computer entertainment they would want to contact me. Then I could try and flog them some games. We broadcast my first on-air video game on the 257FM waveband in the wee small hours of December 15th 1977.
See what I mean? Mel Croucher gets things done because people like him.
The history of Automata is annoyingly fractal. Every time I try to focus in, more and more detail is revealed. I'm hungry and need some food. So I stop.
"We're dealing with kids who believe in Santa Claus, and we can't let them down."
03/09/2024: Time to read again an April 1986 CRASH interview. This was given after Mel had left Automata, on 1st April 1985 The interview comes from phase 2 (as I saw it at the time) of Mel Croucher's career. He had moved to become a journalist and pundit for hire in computer magazines. This particular interview is one I remember reading at the time and I took against Mel Croucher because of his tone towards teenagers like myself.
Last year I was in the company of a very large and very well known software house wherein the man was dressed in a grey three piece suit looking worried, and his PR boys and girls were all very well turned out, plying people with this, that and the other, and the structure was a wonderful pack of cards. Who wrote the programs? In they came, like the seven dwarves. These little children came in and were given a shandy or something. The whole company stood or fell on what these little kids could turn out. When I say kids, I mean kids -we were talking to fourteen or fifteen year old programmers. They can only be derivative -it is impossible for them to come up with an original idea, absolutely impossible -for even if they do they haven't got the vocabulary to express it.
I was fourteen when I read this interview. I hated it. I thought it was snobby and patronising. The idea that teenagers can't have or express an original idea is one I rejected then and now. Mozart would disagree (is the glib response). It's a reductive statement that ignores and dismisses peoples' experiences. It also prises the lid off a can labelled "what is an original idea". The prize treasure hunt idea for Pimania came from Kit William's best-selling book Masquerade. The storyline of Deus Ex Machina is inspired by Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man. Does this mean these are not original ideas? Oh no. I've spilled worms everywhere.
...And now I'm arguing with a 38 year old interview. Mel's comment comes off the back of talking about how derivative most games are (a common hobby horse in his interviews). I prefer to think it's a poor attempt at circling back to that topic. I admire Mel Croucher's demands for the software industry to make better use of the potential of games. I think it's a demand which has become more relevant as the industry has become more reliant on existing franchises and remakes. However, calling for games to live up to their potential is not the same as demanding more originality and an original game is not necessarily a good one.
And here I am talking about Mel Croucher again. What about Christian Penfold? The second half of Automata. I'm mentioning him and Mel Croucher in something like a 1:5 ratio. Did Christian ever give an interview? That goes on my end of day to-do list. Which looks like this:
1. Is Mel Croucher the Nigel Kneale of the software industry?
2. Christian Penfold. Learn more/anything.
3. Read the Deus Ex Machina book extract properly.
4. Write something about the games PiMania and My Name Is Uncle Groucho You Win A Fat Cigar.
5. What happened to Automata after 1st April 1985?
6. How was Mel Croucher writing programs in 1977?
"There's only one person who benefits from charts, and that's the printer."
04/09/2024. I find this on newspapers.com
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| The SUNDAY PEOPLE 12 December 1982 page 11 |
"The public aren't going to get the full benefit from Deus Ex Machina because of the distributor's shortsightedness."
05/09/2024. I rewrite the introduction. The opening of the September 1st entry is rendered mostly redundant. During this process I also cack-handedly delete the scratchpad of useful links and half thought out sentences I always keep at the bottom of pages as I write them. This is a bummer.
The answer to question 1. (above) is no. Or is it yes? Nigel Kneale was a pioneering writer who pushed television drama into new areas. Even when he worked in well-trodden areas, like ghost stories, he brought in new ideas and made original points, and encouraged the viewer to expect more from their entertainment. He also hated the sixties counterculture and pushed back against it, but was able to harness that hatred to inspire new works.
"The talent in this industry is being eaten up by guppies."
06/09/2024: I track down the episode of ITV's Magic Micro Mission which features Mel Croucher, as Groucho Marx and Christian Penfold as the Piman, and a studio of baffled kids. It's episode five. Broadcast on Wednesday 14th December at 5.15pm (not Thames, they were showing Diff'rent Strokes).
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| MAGIC MICRO MISSION Episode five |
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| BURTON MAIL Wednesday December 14 1983 page 13 |
That Pie-Man credit isn't an invention of the BURTON MAIL. Whoever wrote the blub/press release for the episode got wrong the name of Christian Penfold's alter ego. The mistake is diligently repeated across the national press.
"To say that the days of the Porsche are over is a lie; they were never here."
08/09/2024. I rewrite the introduction again. I also track down one of the links I lost when I wiped my scratchpad. A feature called The Race Is On To Save A Valuable Resource Of Video Game History. It's about the lack of any sort of online archive for trade magazine COMPUTER TRADE WEEKLY. The article includes a couple of images from Mel Croucher's personal collection and is the source of the various quotes dotted around this page.
I have 30 minutes between putting out the bins and going to bed. I decide to tackle item 5 on the to-do list. What happens to Automata after 1st April 1985? "Croucher and Penfold split" was the headline on POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY's news story (4 April - 10 April 1985 page 5).
MEL Croucher, one half of the duo that headed Automata, has now effectively left the company.
While Mel is remaining as Automata's company secretary, his partner Christian Penfold has taken over the day-to-day running.
"I felt it was time for a change," said Mel. "A few other options have come up for me recently. However, Christian will be keeping the philosophy of Automata.
Christian said, "Automata is obviously a smaller outfit without Mel but I hope that we will be bringing out a second Ten Pack of new games in the near future.
"Automata certainly won't be be going bankrupt - we never had any money in the first place."
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| POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY 17-23 March 1983 |
The answer to all of these questions appears to be yes/no. This is annoying.
I fuss over the introduction again. I worry it makes me look unreasonable. My enthusiasm for Automata is guarded for a couple of reasons. First, I never much liked what I saw as Mel Croucher's constant criticism of other games. I was a computer game obsessed teen and read criticism of games as criticism of myself. That's on me. But its not easy to shake the memory of reading interviews which returned to the theme of how unimaginative mainstream games were and imagine it being said in a tone of, "you like these? You must be an idiot."
Also lurking in my memory is an Automata game called Pi-Eyed. A game from 1984 which was my only eighties contact with the company. The objective is to get the Piman drunk. It's an anti-game. The more you drink the harder he is to control and you lose points by playing. Ho ho ho, very satirical. It cost £6. I'm sure it's wonderfully subversive and a rebellious jab at what was an increasingly professional UK software scene. But it cost £6.
Finally, scattered across the internet are a lot of very well meaning modern articles about Deus Ex Machina. These articles meditate on software as art and try to pin down the blurred borders between games and experiences. I don't deny the right of these articles to exist and I certainly don't deny their conclusions but a positive consensus has solidified around Deus Ex Machina and Automata, and I do reserve the right to be contrary. I want to walk round the Critical Respect Monolith and give it a kick to see what falls off.
Enough whinging self-justification. The success of Pimania was driven by the hunt for the £6000 Golden Sundial of Pi "crafted by the winner of the De Beers Diamond International award, from gold, diamond and the most precious of the earth's riches." Meanwhile, eureka! I've found my own personal Golden Sundial -an interview with Christian Penfold. It's from COMPUTER & VIDEOGAMES, January 1984. Its not long but it's nice to redress the balance a bit and give Christian Penfold his own paragraph.
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| COMPUTER & VIDEOGAMES January 1984 page 15 |
Now I'm going to write about Pimania and My Name is Uncle Groucho... You Win a Fat Cigar. Groucho was the follow up to Pimania. It was Automata's second prize quiz game, and an attempt to recapture the Pimania lighting in a bottle. The prize this time was a trip to Hollywood for two to meet a mystery celebrity, identified by playing the game. On offer were a flight on Concord, a cruise back from New York on the QE2, and £500 spending money. Unlike Pimania, this competition had a closing date; 1st June 1984. The winner had taken their holiday long before the Golden Sundial was claimed.
Groucho never captured peoples' imagination like Pimania. I wonder if this is because the competition was better structured. The joy of the quest for the Golden Sundial was that it was open-ended. People could join at any time and Pimania got a fresh round of publicity each time magazines reminded readers the Sundial was still waiting to be claimed.
I'm full of admiration for Pimania. On the surface, it was just a 22 location adventure game written in BASIC. However it was, as Automata often liked to say, "a bit of a cult." Two years after release the game had sold 100,000 copies; according to the SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (23 Sept 1984). And yet the Golden Sundial remained unclaimed. Because the game was written in BASIC and not protected in any way people could, if they wanted, browse through the game code to find the location of the sundial. It's a tribute to the genuine cleverness of Pimania that the answer was resistant to such brute force tactics. The solution wasn't in the code. Playing the game revealed clues to location of the Golden Sundial and the date and time you needed to be there to claim your prize, but players had to take what they learned in the game and apply it to the real world. The very first puzzle sets the tone perfectly, On screen is the message:
"A KEY TURNS THE LOCK."
The solution is brilliant. And primes the player with the idea that they have to look beyond the screen to the physical world because the key in not found in the game. It's on the ZX Spectrum keyboard. Answer below, in green.
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| POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY 28 JULY- 3 AUGUST 1983 page 48 |
In 1984, no one claimed the Golden Sundial. There was another, smaller, mention on the back page of PCW.
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| POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY 2-8 AUGUST 1984 page 52 |
It's 22nd July 1985. Even after the failure of Deus Ex Machina. After Automata moved behind the anonymity of a PO Box address (around the middle of March 1985). After the bitter SINCLAIR USER interview. After Mel Croucher departed the company. After the monthly PCW adverts ended unhappily. A month after C&VG speculated the prize hunt was a rip off. Christian Penfold and Mel Croucher still cared enough to head to Litlington White Horse. Christian Penfold pulled on the Piman costume and the pair waited until noon.
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| HOME COMPUTING WEEKLY August 6-12 1985 page 1 |
I like to think if the prize had gone unclaimed, the pair would have returned in 1986.
"We have one car, and a pint of beer and a packet of crisps for lunch: we're not interested in flying to the states for a gentleman to promise us a dream."
10/09/2024. Mr Cockup is in town. I started absentmindedly moving paragraphs around yesterday to make this article flow better. I can't do that because of my stupid novelty structure rules, chronological order only. This is a shame. The photo of the winners of the hunt for the Golden Sundial would make a smashing last paragraph. Feel free to stop reading here.
To answer my sixth question raised on 01/09/2024. Mel Croucher was writing his first programs on the Commodore PET. I should have realised. See my Commodore Business Machines article for a little more detail on the PET's success in the UK, and more importantly where Commodore were based on Euston Road.
Why was Automata founded? According to Mel Croucher's interview with solutionarchive.com, Radio Victory "would only pay registered companies, so I formed one".
17/09/2024. Today's question. Should I change the Deus Ex Machina cover photo? I'd quite like to use the cover for Pimania. I feel it's more representative of Automata; it was the game which laid the foundation for Automata's success; it was also the game which established the reputation for the company and established the way the company saw and promoted itself; and it was a joint effort between Croucher and Penfold. On the other hand Deus Ex Machina was Mel Croucher's project. Deus Ex Machina is the end. Pimania is the beginning. I really should change the picture but... Deus Ex Machina is the game people know. It's more likely to attract a casual reader. I'm an nothing if not cynically aware of the need to catch passing internet trade. Deus Ex Machina stays.
There's a repeated story that a Pimania player was convinced the grand prize could only be claimed in Bethlehem at Christmas
19/09/2024. That previous sentence ended abruptly. Let's see if I can get the story finished. But first I need to correct all the HTML errors Blogger has seemingly introduced all by itself.
[30 dreary minutes later].
Two stories are repeated regularly about Pimania. That the game was cited in a divorce case, and that someone told Automata they were going to Bethlehem on Christmas Day and either went, or were persuaded not to at the last minute. It's a good story and like a lot of good stories it gathers its own momentum and is retold and embellished. Tomorrow, I'll have a look and see if it's worth tracking the evolution of the story.
20/09/2024. Pimania, evolution of a Bethlehem anecdote. I did start tracking this but it's not that interesting, lets skip it. I'm going to finish talking about Pimania with a couple of stories from C&VG.
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| C&VG October 1984 page 22 |
That might be everything I wanted to say.
23/09/2024. Not the end after all. I have spent a couple of days struggling to write anything meaningful about Deus Ex Machina. It didn't work so I've binned it. I don't have anything fresh to add. Automata's spirit was broken. Read the Ballard of the Piman SINCLAIR USER interview and see the bitterness in Christian Penfold's words:
For Mel it was the crescendo of an idea, an emotional achievement. On my side, I have been flattened by the lack of response and sales despite the wonderful things said about it. I sit here and feel heartbroken at the pathetic way the wholesalers have handled it.
Mel Croucher left Automata to Christian Penfold. A month later at the end of May the company also stopped their weekly adverts on the back page of PCW. Penfold wrote, in answer to letters, to explain what happened:
For over two years we ran the back page cartoon strip with Popular Computing Weekly, as an advert. This meant we paid for the page, Gremlin to draw it and our time to write the scripts. Twelve months ago, you, the readers, started treating the back page as editorial. Mail order sales dropped so dramatically that we asked Popular Computing Weekly to help carry some of the costs. Alas, things have not worked out.
(POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY, 23-29 MAY 1985 page 6)
The end of the comic strip is the failure of Deus Ex Machina on a smaller stage. It's the same root causes, lack of reader/consumer engagement and no support from the magazine/industry. Up in the introduction, I said that Automata deliberately positioned themselves outside of the UK software mainstream. That's a simplification. There was no mainstream when Automata were founded in 1977. There was no UK software industry. Its more accurate to say that new software houses formed around Automata and moved off to become an industry while Automata stayed put. If Automata appeared to be on the far fringes of things by 1985, that was just because everyone else had moved so far away. Automata thrived in the cottage industry days when everyone sold by software mail order and met in person to sell games from trestle tables at Microfairs. They days when a sophisticated advertising campaign was one advert in YOUR COMPUTER and another in C&VG.
What had worked for Automata in the past didn't anymore. Presumably it was struggling to support itself financially. But more importantly after Deus Ex Machina, the company was struggling to support itself emotionally. It's clear from assorted interviews that what what Christian Penfold and Mel Croucher really enjoyed was being silly and doing what people didn't expect (although, money obviously was nice); putting songs on the B-side of computer games; having success with a 22 location BASIC game; dressing up and meeting fans; selling games to people face to face; talking to customers on the telephone; reading and answering letters. After Deus Ex Machina, it seems like the fun had gone. That's why Croucher and Penfold went to Litlington White Horse in July 1985. It was one last chance to catch the wave the company had been riding, as it broke and rolled back.
I really wish I had a nice picture to go here. Reusing the Golden Sundial photo seems like cheating... hang on.
"We care about the public, and just want to be paid for our efforts,"
I've reassembled my carelessly deleted scratchpad of links and half thought out ideas. Normally I'd delete it. This time, in the spirit of this monstrous carbuncle, I'm going to leave it in place and try and give a little context to whatever lurks within:
What did Automata want? Engagement.
I answered this, just up the page. Apparently I wasn't paying attention.
Where Automata really first?
Now that's a complicated question and not just because I've mistyped "where" instead of "were". My default position is to believe people unless I find something clearly contradictory. In this case, Automata were clearly founded in 1977 which was before Molimerx, who up to now, I've always assumed we're the first UK company.
The complicated failure of Deus Ex Machina seems to have broken the spirit of the company.
An early attempt to write something sensible about Deus Ex Machina.
it covered it
Well, that's clearly ungrammatical.
. I need to talk about . There's a tendency to talk about the failure of the game in hushed tones. I've done it myself, up the page. But Deus Ex Machina wasn't a failure in the sense that the film Heaven's Gate was a failure. The game didn't lose money. Sales were very disappointing but in later years Mel Croucher confirmed the game covered its development costs. And yet Deus Ex Machina split up the Mel Croucher and Christian Penfold partnership at the heart of Automata.
More Deus Ex chat.
I think the failure of Deus Ex Machina might have cut deeper because its the point where Automata tried to fit in. The company looks at what the industry has become and says okay, you want product. You want a nice box, and gifts, and a proper marketing campaign, and mass media coverage. We'll play nice. We'll follow your rules. And the industry and consumers turned up their nose and went "oh not like that".
Actually, I quite like that. It's a shame I couldn't fit it in anywhere.
The failure exposed faults already present inside Automata.
Could Automata have found space as a company releasing games no one else would? Their 1984 game Crusoe fits that description as does Deus Ex. If Automata have carried on could they have been the place for outsider titles like Mel Croucher's later game ID?
game gets talked about as a Heavens Gate
Two more attempts trying, and failing to find a fresh angle.
There is no neat unified theory about why Deus Ex Machina failed.
A line from a more pretentious attempt to write about Deus Ex Machina. Also, it should be grand unified theory not neat.
sWh athahaWhsW
I don't know what means. The cat has been temporarily banished from my stinking garret in case it has been walking on the keyboard.
https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1983-09-15/page/n59/mode/2up?view=theater
That's a link to the back page of PCW, 15-21 September 1983. When Automata moved from Osbourne Road to Highland Road. I don't know why I didn't use this.
Is that the earliest mention? I think so
The only surviving remnant of multiple paragraphs tracking the embellishment of the Pimania/Bethlehem story.
https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-04-26/page/n55/mode/1up?view=theater
A link to an Automata advert that's a lovely spoof of the sort of hype Imagine was pumping out for its megagames in early 1984.
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| Left, C&VG (March 1984 page 155). Right, PCW (26 April- 2 May 1984 page 56) |
I'm probably going to do an article just about Automata's PCW back page adverts and what they say about the company's view of the industry, and itself. But it will need to include a content warning. Some of the adverts feature stereotypes not acceptable today. I could just not mention the off-colour stuff but it doesn't seem fair to anyone planning a trip through the wider archive.
https://archive.org/details/popular-computing-weekly-1984-09-06/page/n55/mode/2up
I'm on more personally comfortable ground with this. Automata's advert announcing Deus Ex Machina. Some really good caricatures of Jon Pertwee, Frankie Howerd, and Ian Dury.
That's the link to Christian Penfold's letter to PCW about the cancellation of the comic strip. I don't know why this is down here.
Well I've played the game. This isn't a review blog so I'm not going to tell you want I think. That's the punchline. Limp. Isn't it.
An early attempt at ending this article. The plan was to keep making a really big deal about how I was going to play Deus Ex Machina and then, right at the end dismiss the idea of talking about the game. I abandoned the idea because it was rubbish and it seemed too much like a mean-spirited dig at the reader.
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/page.php?issue_id=2971&page=8
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/page.php?issue_id=2978&page=6
Two links to August 1987 news pieces about the eventual fate of Automata; the name was sold to Intercepter Software. I don't think any of the three games mentioned Nythyhel, Sword of Kings or Asiento were ever released. I don't know why I didn't use this. Assuming Christian Penfold sold the name on, then it's the last thing he did before he drifted out of the public eye.
https://www.timeextension.com/features/the-race-is-on-to-save-a-valuable-resource-of-video-game-history
The article about the lack of any sort of archive for COMPUTER TRADE WEEKLY. If you have copies digitise them!
Who took the picture?
This is the BIG question. Who took the picture of the winners of the Golden Sundial? Who was the third (pi)man?
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| POPULAR COMPUTING WEEKLY 25 April - 1 May 1985 page 52 |
And now: How do I get to the end?
Its clear the right way to end this article is with the picture of Mel Croucher, Christian Penfold, and the two winners of the Golden Sundial. However I'm too wedded to my self-imposed rules to make the required changes.
Luckily I have found the perfect alternative. It starts with this video from Rose Tinted Spectrum. It is genuinely lovely. A thoughtful piece on Automata and their place in software history. And at the bottom are the Youtube comments. Normally these are a minefield of personal attacks and racism but on this occasion the comments are kind and rightly full of praise for the video and Automata. And one of them stands out. A comment from user Christian-rv9hb. Now, on the internet anyone can pretend to be anyone else but I choose to take this comment at face value because I believe in the Piman.
Hmm, I am The PiMan.... and sitting here crying at this wonderful production. Thank you! I didn't die, just smell like I did! Who am I? Christian Penfold.... The PiMan :)
If any of the following people read this, they should leave a comment or email whereweretheynow@gmail.com as quickly as possible;
Christian Penfold
Sue Cooper or Lizi Newman from Ilkley -the winners of the Golden Sundial.
Mr. P. A. Daley of Stoke-on-Trent, who won the Uncle Groucho contest.
The person who was planning to go to Bethlehem on Christmas Day, if you exist.
The third person who took the Golden Sundial photo.
Jurgen Hermannus and/or Volker Goller
John Davidson of Gosport and Mr Willis of Nottingham and anyone else who ever stood on a white horse at noon on 22nd July.
Oonagh McDonald CBE
Mel Croucher, why not.~
Things YOU the READER should DO
If you have any copies of COMPUTER TRADE WEEKLY, get them digitized and uploaded to the internet immediately. I cannot stress this enough.
Be nice. Go to Amazon and buy a copy of DEUS EX MACHINA: THE BEST GAME YOU NEVER PLAYED IN YOUR LIFE. I mean, obviously it would be nice to not have to buy a copy from The Machine but that's where the publisher, Acorn Books, directs people.
Leave a comment, if you want.
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