I found very quickly there are fewer interviews than you might expect for someone who twice founded big influential software houses and whose software CV contains some real milestones. Bug-Byte's Spectral Invaders, was advertised as the first "machine code" game to appear on the Spectrum, around September 1982. This was followed at the end of the year by Arcadia which laid the foundations for Imagine. There was also Barbarian in 1987, the first Psygnosis game to enjoy any real success. Then, in 1988 Dave Lawson left Psygnosis and founded his own development company called Kinetica, based in Wallasey on the Wirral. He resurfaced in 1990 with a game called Gold of the Aztecs which proved to be Kinetica's only game.
In the end I found four different interviews with Dave Lawson, and I thought I'd present them here in the order I tracked them down. First, an interview from French magazine TILT, September 1990 page 10 to promote Gold of the Aztecs.
Gold of the Aztecs
Co-founder of Psygnosis and creator of Barbarian, Dave Lawson returns with a superb new game: Gold of the Aztecs. This pre-Columbian treasure hunt has all the makings of a hit.
Dave Lawson is the creator of Gold of the Aztecs. His name is familiar to those who experienced the early days of the Atari ST and the 16-bit Commodore (the Amiga 1000 at the time). Veterans will surely remember Brataccas, Barbarian, and Obliterator. These creations by David Lawson were the first products of Psygnosis. Let's remember that Dave co-founded Psygnosls with Ian Hetherington. He now heads a development company called Kinetica. Gold of the Aztecs, released under the US Gold label, is interesting for several reasons, the most important being the Game Developer System (GDS). This is the name given to the game generator that Dave developed to create his software. A rather reserved, even distrustful, character, we had some difficulty obtaining more information from him about his invention.
Tilt. What is the GDS?
Dave Lawson. (Pauses to think, then laughs.) I don't want to give too many details about the GDS.
T. Why so much secrecy surrounding the GDS?
D.L. At Kinetica, we prefer to be as discreet as possible; no one should know what we do. Several aspects of the GDS are unique... we had a lot of trouble developing them, and we don't want to reveal them. It's as simple as that.
T. How long did it take you to develop this GDS and what does it offer that other game generators don't?
D.L. It took me over four years because it's a highly sought-after module. With it, the entire development phase becomes almost a formality! In fact, the complexity of game development is handled by the GE. It manages everything except the sound.
T. Does that mean the GDS saves you development time?
D.L. Let's be clear, the GDS was not initially designed to shorten development time. We are indeed saving time, but that doesn't mean we're finishing very quickly. This time saved during the development phase allows us to focus all our efforts on the game's concept, pushing it to a high level of perfection. For example, a game that would normally require two years of development could be completed in one year. We could even finish it in three months, but the game wouldn't be truly high quality. That's why we're dedicating the remaining nine months to perfecting the game.
T. Is the GDS also involved at this stage?
D.L. The GDS is involved at virtually every level. It was created to address the most thorny problem for game publishers: the cumbersome nature of programming. For example, in a game, the graphics aspect poses no problem. You just need a few good graphic designers to whom you give instructions. And if things aren't progressing quickly enough, you can hire a few more graphic designers. On the other hand, there's always ONE programmer trying to solve all the problems with animation, memory, etc. In short, to make the game. The delays in product releases, the technical problems that all publishers experience, almost always come from the programmer. At Kinetica, we don't have programmers. Thanks to the GDS, we only have artists who invent games. Artists are creators, which isn't necessarily the case for programmers. In most cases, they don't possess an ounce of creativity, and that's perfectly normal. A good programmer is, above all, someone who is logical.
T. On which machines does the GDS run?
D.L. Only on Macintosh because its user-friendliness enhances the simplicity of using the GDS. The artist simply has to point and click to create their game! No technical or programming knowledge is required. The game is then created and transferred to PC, ST, and Amiga.
T. What are the limitations or constraints offered by a game generator such as the GDS?
D.L. There are none, except for creating a very precise storyboard of your game before using the GDS. It can be used in practically all genres, whether action, strategy, adventure/arcade, or simulation. Actually, yes... there are limitations: they depend on the creativity of the user and the capabilities of the machines on which the game runs.
T. When did you first think about creating it?
D.L. (Laughs.) I think any publisher would tell you they dream of owning a game generator like this one.
After the interview, Dave Lawson gave me a brilliant demonstration of the possibilities of the GDS using scenery from God of the Aztecs. It transfers data to ST and Amiga in seconds. Setting up scenery, objects, and animations for a scene is extremely fast. Furthermore, any modification can be made at any time with instant results. This ability to immediately visualize a scene that has just undergone changes (and to be able to change it back instantly) truly unleashes creativity. In fact, you only need to look at Gold of the Aztecs to realize this. I've never seen an adventure/arcade game with such rich graphical detail. You have to play the same scene several times to see everything that happens. The traps are superbly designed. You can clearly see that the developers took the time necessary to give the game a high level of gameplay interest. Gold of the Aztecs, in its concept, resembles the superb Barbarion by Psygnosis, but with more screens (81 in total) and greater gameplay depth. The story puts you in the shoes of an adventurer, a sort of Indiana Jones, searching for the Aztec treasure. I rarely give my opinion on games presented in preview, but I must admit that, for this one, I was hooked. Gold of the Aztecs is probably one of the best arcade/adventure games of the moment. I'll tell you more in the review in the next issue of Tilt. I'm already eagerly awaiting it! Release is planned for August/September on Atari ST, Amiqa, and PC at a price of 200 francs.
Dany Boolauck
Next up was an GAMES MACHINE preview of Gold of the Aztecs from the August 1990 issue. The three page article mainly focuses on the game but at the bottom of page 8 is a third of a page boxout which gives a potted biography and a few quotes:
After igniting his computer interests with a Cambridge Mk.14 (Uncle Clive's very first computer) David entered the hallowed halls of Bug-Byte where he developed the first commercial products for the VIC-2D [Vic Men, written on an Atari 8-bit machine and converted to the VIC in a day), the BBC (Spacewarp) and, probably, the Spectrum (Spectral Invaders), in fact Spectral Invaders was available before anyone had actually received a Spectrum! The game, believe it or not, being written solely via reference from the first copy of the Spectrum manual.
David's interest in the computer business as a whole led him into other aspects of game production — he was part of the very first telesales network for the UK, for example. However, it was when David Lawson co-founded the groundbreaking software house Imagine that he was forced into the limelight. These were the days of the computer whizz-kid. The lad who made a million by the time he was 16, owned a Ferrari, and lived the high-life. However, there appears to be more fiction than fact written about the Liverpudlian company. David explains: 'There were a lot of unfounded rumours about Imagine. It's like most of the stories seen in the Sunday papers. Most of it was invented just to create a good story'.
From the ashes of imagine, Psygnosis was born, and again David was the first with a 16-bit game, on the ST. The game was Baratticus, a product that was reputedly all that was left of Imagined megagame Bandersnatch. Regardless of its origin, the game was visually impressive, If not that addictive.
However, Psygnosis now deal more in commissioning products, enhancing and marketing them for final sale. This was one of the reasons for Lawsons' departure, product development (actually creating the games themselves) being more his forte. This is what forming Kinetica was all about, that and developing their revolutionary propriety game creation systems. As David says himself: 'Kinetica is technology driven'.
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| C&VG YEARBOOK 1984 page 10 |
The New Heroes
We take you to Liverpool to meet Dave Lawson the designer/programmer of Arcadia, Spectral Invaders, Spectral Spectres, Ah Diddums, and Schizoids.
If there is one person in England who you could describe as the country's top games programmer it must surely be Dave Lawson.
Like a top pop star Dave, cofounder of Imagine, the Liverpool software house, can look back on a string of number one hit games.
But Dave's successes have not just been top selling games they have also been first in other respects.
Spectral Invaders was the first commercially produced game for the Sinclair Spectrum, Space Warp the first commercially produced game for the BBC, and Dave was also heavily involved in the controversial Vic Men, the first game for the Vic20.
Soon after these games were produced Dave wrote one of Bug Byte's all time greats — Spectrum Spectres [sic]. The money earned on Spectres abled him to go into business for himself with another ex-Bug Byte employee — Mark Butler — and so Imagine was born.
Shortly after the split with Bug Byte Dave was back at the keyboard but this time writing games for his own company. By last Christmas Imagine were able to launch their first game — Arcadia, The game was an instant hit on the Spectrum and has been since converted for the Vic-20 and the Commodore 64.
Pressure of running an expanding company has forced Dave away from the computer though he still found time to write Ah Diddums, released in January.
I managed to steal an hour out of hectic schedule to find out a little about the man behind the games. Born twenty-three years ago in Liverpool and educated at Quarrymount Secondary Modern, Dave left school and home at 15, "I lived with friends and did odd jobs — anything I really. It's easy to get jobs if you get I the technique right. I spent the next two years hitch-hiking, sometimes by myself and sometimes with other people.
"When I was seventeen I joined I the merchant navy as a trainee engineer. The next year and a hall were spent at various colleges. It was boring. They make you spend I about four years at college before you get anywhere near a ship."
The navy and Dave parted company in the summer of 1979 and he was back in Liverpool, back to the odd jobs and the hitch-hiking but this time much further afield — Spain, Italy, France and Germany.
He shrugs at the suggestion that hitch-hiking can be a lonely way of travelling: "It teaches you to be independent".
It was at this time that Dave's interest in computers began. "I'm a compulsive reader. I read anything. I started reading electronics magazines especially Electronics Today International. I got interested in it because it seemed difficult. Eventually I saw an advert for a kit computer — a Nascom. I went straight out and bought one from Microdigital in Liverpool."
"It took me about a week to learn machine code. I didn't bother with basic. I couldn't see the point."
Dave was soon writing his own programmes and developed a sharp disapproval for the professional software currently available in the entertainment field. Of his own work ai this time he was more confident. "I knew it would be valuable one day".
Valuable could be taken as something of an understatement from a man who has just taken delivery of a brand new Ferrari Mondiall.
A Ferrari is hardly the choice of a modest man, although Lawson insists that the money is not his main motivation. "The money means nothing to me. It's the satisfaction of being the best. I feel proud of our games and proud of Imagine. We are also providing people with good quality products, which also gives me pleasure."
His current project is the setting up of what Dave calls a, "software development environment"[1]. This is an ideal set of circumstances, tools, working conditions, programmers and artists which collectively produce a good computer games production line.
"There is no quick way of writing a good game. We brain storm our programmers all day. Fire ideas at them. We now have two artists working on graphics for the games. In the ideal programming environment the artists and programmers would work together throughout the course of the project."
Since Imagine's launch less then twelve-months ago the company has spawned an advertising agency and there are half a dozen other companies in the pipeline.
Lawson believes in himself and partner Mark Butler. "I think we make a great team. I met him in Laskys. I was playing Star Raiders at the time and he came up to me as a salesman. Good game, he said. I'm going to write one much better I said".
In the short term Imagine will be continuing to produce games for the Spectrum and also for the Commodore 64 before the end of the year.
Lawson says his long term plans are: "To become the biggest software company in the world and to become a public company by 1985."
And with what he has achieved so far we're convinced that this software supremo will do just that.
Lawson's first job in the computer games came as a result of seeing an article about a comparatively un known firm that had just moved to Liverpool.
The firm was called Bug Byte and Dave was invited to join the team after showing the firm's bosses how to use one of their new computers. When the Spectrum first appeared all the software houses were racing to get the first game on sale.
Dave was Bug Byte's main hope in this race and after thirteen failed production models managed to write the game from a pre-printers copy of the Spectrum Users Manual, Bug Byte were gambling that the manual and Lawson's interpretation o were one hundred per cent accurate. The gamble paid off and Spectral Invaders is to this day the most accurate copy of arcade Space Invaders available for the Spectrum.
Dave's talent for arcade cloning was to pay off again for Bug Byte when Dave wrote Vic Men, a straight take-off of Pac Man, for the then new Commodore machine. Unfortunately for Bug Byte the game had to be withdrawn in the face of a threat of legal action by Atari — the holders of the Pac Man copyright.[2]
For Imagine the past nine months has been a period of unprecedented growth.
They have gone from a small office with three employees to a large office block in the centre of Liverpool with twelve employees.
Imagine's General Manager Bruce Everiss boasts proudly of "taking scousers off the dole". When we set up our own production and packaging facility we will take "first seven and then forty scousers off the dole". Here at Computer and Video Games we reckon that Lawson and Imagine will be creating games that will keep them in the limelight for years to come.
Finally, I found this BBC Archive video uploaded just over a year ago. It's taken from a 1983 series called Riverside, broadcast on Monday 24 October at 6.30pm between a repeat of Grange Hill and The Best of Delia. I think, given the date, this interview and the one for the C&VG YEAR BOOK must have taken place around the same time.
Finally, there's a chance to see Dave Lawson speak. He's softly spoken and a bit nervous about being interviewed on camera. He seems a bit taken aback by the theme of the interview (are software programmers the new rock stars?) and breaks out in an embarrassed smile on a couple of occasions. There's a sweet moment when he is talking about people writing in asking for autographed game posters and he laughs, in a way that manages to combine embarrassment, delight, and pride.
Kinetica were based in Wallasey, opposite Birkenhead on the Wirral peninsula. Unit 29 is tucked away in the south west corner of the business centre which houses a few two-story buildings, most of the rest of the centre is single-story units.
I'm fascinated by Dave Lawon's reply in the TILT interview to the question of how long the game development system took to develop:
It took me over four years because it's a highly sought-after module.
The interview was conducted in 1990. If Dave Lawson isn't rounding up then that puts the start of development for the GDS around 1986 when he would have been working on Barbarian for Psygnosis. Was he also working on this in his spare time, or (supposition alert) was this a project developed for Psygnosis which he was allowed to take with him as part of his departure from the company in 1988? One comment in the GAMES MACHINE article notes:
Psygnosis now deal more in commissioning products, enhancing and marketing them for final sale. This was one of the reasons for Lawsons' departure, product development (actually creating the games themselves) being more his forte.
With Psygnosis moving into publishing, rather than development, they wouldn't need a game creation system, so maybe Jonathan Ellis and Ian Hetherington were relaxed about Dave Lawson taking the GDS with him. The one mystery is why was Gold of the Aztecs published by US Gold and not Psygnosis. It's hard not to suspect that someone is being snubbed.
Gold of the Aztecs received mostly positive reviews but wasn't a success. Included in the game was a preview of the next title from Kinectica, Saragossa. The new game was extensively previewed in CU AMIGA (February 1991, page 20) and the same issue mentioned a third game from Kintetica with a medieval theme "loads of sword -fighting knights and plenty of dragons to slay" but Saragossa never arrived and somewhere along the line Kinetica quietly disappeared.
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| CU AMIGA October 1991 page 10 |
[1] It reminds me of the Advanced Technology Group set up at Psygnosis.
[2] See the Bug-Byte article for the difficulties this game caused them when Atari took exception to its existence.
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