I often wonder what percentage of my visitors are budding game developers (perhaps I should conduct a survey?) - from the interest in some of my recent posts, my guess is that the number is quite considerable.
Well, for those amongst you who want to pick the mind of someone who has walked-the-walk… someone who has experience in producing games across platforms, genres and budgets, then today I have something special for you.
After my recent BoxHead post, I invited Sean Cooper to share his thoughts on all things related to Flash and online gaming. Not only has he been very generous with his time but his comments are informative and some are particularly insightful!
I’ve divided my interview into four sections which will be published here over three posts during the course of the next week (some of the sections are quite in depth). I have no doubt that you’ll find it an interesting read and hopefully there are thought-provoking tidbits for the novice and professional alike.
Today we learn about Sean’s background, future posts will cover his take on topics such as the online gaming industry, game development advice and predictions as to what the future has in store for us.
So without any further ado, it’s my pleasure to introduce you to Sean Cooper…
Part 1: Background
Please introduce yourself – who are you, where are you, who do you work for and describe an average day.
My name is Sean Cooper and I am from the UK, England, although I reside in Holland at the moment as my partner is Dutch! I work for myself and with myself only when it comes to writing games. However my partner helps me with all the other business stuff that seems uninteresting to me!
An Average day is spent in many ways. I play a lot of Flash games to get a good idea of what is out there and this helps me to create something different and hopefully unique. I also research new techniques on how to do things faster, as Flash is slow it really helps to understand it’s capabilities by breaking it down to the code it produces. I draw and program new ideas and I also have to work on the games I want to release.
You mention on your site that you’ve been in the industry for 20 years – can you please give a summary of how you got to this point? Family encouragement, university decisions, work experience, personal motivations… what would you identify as the key points that led you to your current position?
I have worked for 3 companies during my career, Bullfrog, EA and Virgin Interactive. I have worked on many original titles and created many ideas that went on to be sold in shops. All my life I have been interested in computers, designing and programming games on them have been a life’s ambition. The encouragement came from myself, my first boss really saw something in me and gave me my first project at 18, which was called Flood.
My personal motivations were to just write cool games and work on the things I want to create, nothing else.
So moving along to present day, well I just had enough of the commercial business and realized that there was more to games than commercial success. I feel that Flash games rock, they are free, quickly accessible and supply a unique gaming experience to that of the commercial markets.
At what stage did you decide to get into Flash and ActionScript? What made you make that jump and what were your first impressions?
Flash 4 I think it was. Now I came across Flash from a work colleague and soon was using it to create drawings for game designs and then I realized, OMG, it is an art package with scripting, real-time scripting. First thoughts were I bet it is just like every other art package with scripting, but no, it was real-time and that meant I could draw a circle and then make it bounce around the screen. No way, how cool is that… so I made Space invaders quickly and sent it to the whole company, there were mixed thoughts, but I stuck to it, buying every version myself as the company could not see any business sense to having this delight.
First impressions were WOW, but why is it so slow?
What got you into game design and development? Have you always been a gamer? If so, which games do you feel have been most influential on your career?
I would not call myself a gamer, I rarely find a game I love but when I do find one I play it death. These games include Doom 2, Command and conquer, Rainbow 6, Battlefield – mostly multiplayer games. I guess when I was a kid I played all the games but then I had so much more fun creating games that I soon stopped playing and started looking.
So I think the most influential games in my career have got to be all the games I have made, now I played and played them to death… if you don’t enjoy the game yourself then it is probably not going to be enjoyed by others.
Have you had any mentors along the way? How have they helped you?
I had one Mentor and only one, my first Boss, his name was Peter Molyneux. He gave me the chance and I took it. He helped by just giving me the chance and then every chance in the future I took it myself and ran with it, just from the shear amount of love for making games.
So there you have it, Part 1 done and dusted; I’m sure we all feel better acquainted now. Stay tuned for the next installment where we discuss topics such as his game development tools and issues within the industry.
Also, remember to check out Sean’s site and remember to be responsible and kill your quota of zombies!.
