I was honoured to be “In the Chair” for the December ‘20 issue of Retro Gamer magazine. Stellar journalist Graeme Mason has pinged me a few times for comments about games I have worked on over the years (for example, see Aliens), and invited his readers to send in questions for me to answer about my career.
His neatly edited version is featured in Issue 215, but I have included all of the questions and my answers in full, below, in case you really are bored! You can read more about most of the projects listed in the interview elsewhere on this website,
Many thanks for Graeme for the invite and to all the people that sent in questions! And if you, reading this now have any additional questions, please do ask them in the comments section below.
Graeme Mason: Where did you grow up?
Jon Dean: A small village called Eton Wick, near Windsor. Family moved to Cippenham, Slough when I was about 14.
Do you remember your first experience of videogames?
Family holiday, Boscombe Pier. Among the shove-penny and bingo machines in the arcade, they had a few games with video displays.
The one I recall spending most of my pocket money on was a submarine game where you looked through a physical periscope, which you rotated left and right, aiming a cross-hair at ships moving across a virtual sea line at the top of the screen. There were several very similar games, but I think the best was Midway’s Sea Wolf. It was very pleasing to press the big red button and launch your torpedoes, triggering sounds and, of course, the delayed reaction as you waited to see if you had sunk your target. The combination of physical elements, with the audio and visual made for a very exciting and engaging experience.
What game do you recall as a favourite from your youth?
I remember becoming aware of Space Invaders in pubs, and always having to queue to get time on one. I used to love the sit-down version best where two of you could play in alternate rounds. The weird sounds and the increasingly frenetic pace of the game made it a favourite.
How old were you in the early Eighties? Do you recall what this time was like for gaming?
I turned 20 in the early 80’s. Much of the innovation had been in coin-operated games so you needed a pocket full of change and access to an arcade or a pub to try anything. The Sinclair ZX-81 home computer began to change things in the UK in 1981, allowing enthusiasts to be able to dabble because it was such a low cost (£70 assembled!), and it wasn’t long before games were being churned out by owners, most of them copies of coin-op games. As I recall, “games” were considered to be trivial and unworthy, so the burgeoning industry became known as “home computing”. Typically, a Dad would justify to his Wife the expense of getting a home computer for the educational benefits for the kids, but of course, the primary use became games!
The early eighties saw lots of low-quality software (mostly games and educational software), many rip-offs of coin-op games, and cassette based for the most part. Anyone could make a game; magazines gave listings you could type in by hand and these often proved to be a great baseline from which you could experiment, making your own game variation. Some of the best programmers I worked with started this way. Home grown publishers grew up, selling their wares at conventions or through the mail. It was the wild west!
What was your first computer/games console?
Atari 800 with 16K RAM
How did you start in the games industry?
I got a job at Atari’s international division when they opened up in the UK, in tech/end-user support. Initially the job was based in Cheshunt, at Ingersoll, formerly Atari’s UK distributor. The office then moved to Slough but was referred to by Atari as the London office. Close enough, I guess!
What was your role at Atari and which games did you work on in particular?
As a ‘Product Support Specialist’, me and my boss, Jon Norledge, supported the entire Atari product line sold throughout the UK and Ireland. In those days everything was snail mail or phone calls. If you were an Atari 400 or 800 home computer user and wanted help with the (very buggy) 6502 Assembler Editor, your call would end up at our desks. If you wanted to make a custom cable to connect your electric typewriter to the serial port of your home computer, your letter would be answered by us with a wiring diagram. If you were a kid who was stuck on a level of Pacman and called the ‘Atari Hotline’, you would get put through to Captain Atari – aka one of the Jons!
Atari opened up a division of Atarisoft at the ‘London’ office, whose job it was to make Atari IP for non-Atari home computer systems, and Jon N. moved into that and asked me to join him – it was a Producer job in today’s terminology. This was my first experience working in development, coordinating third-party developers. My first project was actually a non-games project: at the time, Atari was part of Warner Communications, and had ties with Warner Home Video. So, the idea was to make an inventory management system for video stores, using Atari home computers, to show just how versatile they were. I coined the name ‘Atari Video F.I.L.M.S.’ for the project – the film, inventory and loan management system. I got to setup systems in real video stores and help the managers and staff at each use the program we had come up with. As I recall, we had a stack of four Atari 810 Disk Drives churning away managing the database at each store. It was clunky, but it mostly worked.
I also helped Jon N. coordinating game projects, including conversions of Pole Position, Pac Man, Ms, Pac Man, Dig Dug and more, for systems including the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, BBC Micro and Dragon 32.
This must have been a simultaneously exciting and scary time to work in the industry?
Exciting, yes; I don’t recall it being scary. We didn’t know that we were at the start of what would become the games industry. The mainstream media viewed the burgeoning industry as a fad, this year’s novelty which was either a brilliant glimpse into the future or nothing but a waste of time which would ruin young people. My Mum could not understand why I got paid to “just play games all day”. I wish. It got scary when Atari was sold. I had just gotten married, got a house and a dog!
Presuming that was Atari in the UK, how did the videogame crash affect things at Atari for you?
The first I knew of it was when I got back to the office from a video store check-up one morning, to find most of the staff being ushered into the main conference room. I went to join them and the Managing Director, Graham Clark, who was standing at the door, told me I couldn’t go in, I should go to my desk. I went upstairs to Atarisoft and it was almost deserted. It turns out that the company was being sold to Jack Tramiel, and a skeleton staff was to remain. I was among them, moved into a marketing role. I assume it’s because I was cheap, being a junior level employee, and knew the product line, given my product support background. That turned out to be a great opportunity for me, getting hands dirty with the launch of the XE product line and then the ST. I got to evangelize the products to retailers and distributors, spearheaded a push into education, talked with many of the user groups around the UK, got to know many software developers trying to get them to support Atari platforms with their releases, plus helped persuade a magazine publisher to launch the official Atari magazine, as well as continuing to support in whatever way I could, the indie Page 6 Atari magazine. Incredible experience.
I remember meeting Jack Tramiel, who had a reputation for firing people that told him things he didn’t want to hear. For him Atari was all about the new ST and making it the first mass-market personal computer. The new Atari was all about cheap, “Power without the price”. I remember arguing that Atari was “the” games brand, and the opportunity for the ST was as a 16-bit gaming platform, leveraging what Tramiel had bought in a fire-sale from Warners. I had provisionally lined up bleeding edge 16-bit games from FireIron (who became Psygnosis) as launch titles as well as cool MIDI music tools from Island (Records). Mr. Tramiel didn’t think this quite the coup that I did. I remember him shouting, telling me why I was wrong and didn’t understand; the problem with “the old Atari people”, he said, was that they were fixated with games and games were not the future. My heart was beating hard and I assumed I was fired, but hey, if you’re going to get fired, it might as well be by the man himself. But instead he said I would now work as part of the software development group as he admired my initiative, even if wrong!
Who did you work with at Atari?
Jon Norledge was my first boss there, at first in product support and then at Atarisoft. Our team included Shamus Kelly, Bob Katz, Les Player, George West, Steve (can’t remember his surname), Yves Greppin, Francis Connelly, Karen Tarvin. Plus, many people at Atari US, of course.
What did you do after Atari, in 1985?
I teamed up for a brief while with a local distributor I had gotten to know, called Software Express in Birmingham. They wanted to get into software publishing, so for a few months I helped them get some products published.
Then you started work at Activision – was this a new venture in the UK? Didn’t you work closely with Electric Dreams/Rod Cousens?
I got to know Rod from his days at Argus when I was calling trying to get more products published for the Atari platform. He started Electric Dreams as an affiliate publisher of Activision, as they started to ramp up their European business. He and Paul Cooper had gotten off to a great start in Southampton (“Spindizzy” and “Back to the Future” among the first hits) and soon Rod was the UK MD of Activision. Rod called me and said he wanted to setup a studio to coordinate all of Activision’s European software development activities, including all the affiliate labels. Apparently, he had been impressed at my initiative at Atari and thought I would be good at this. And so it was; I started “Software Studios” in Southampton and had an office there as well as in Hampstead at Activision’s UK HQ, working closely with Rod and his team.
What was your role at Activision and were you involved in licensing at all?
I was responsible for Software Studios, which was a small team of producers managing external developers. Sometimes we would buy original IP and help those get finished; others were licenses Rod would secure, for which we needed to come up with designs, find programmers and artists, project manage them to completion, manage all the QA and ultimately deliver gold masters. Over time as Rod added more affiliate publishing deals, we ended up managing development for groups including System 3. I think we built more than 250 skus over two years.
What was your favourite game worked on while at Activision?
Two come immediately to mind; one was Nejo (released as Prodigy), an original IP on Spectrum, CPC and C64. It was quite the coup for us because we were trying to woo star developers to come and work with us, and Mev Dinc took some persuading. That was the start of a career-long friendship for us. I learned so much about being an indie developer from Mev as well as the needs of original IP creation, not least the constant iteration, which forced me to figure out how to plan for it in my project plan.
The second was Super Sprint, one of our first 16-bit games. Rod knew a talented programmer from his Argus days who was now at university, Nalin Sharma. Nalin in turn introduced us to some of his roommates from the CS class and they jumped at the chance to create the 16-bit Super Sprint. For me, its one of the best coin-op conversions ever made. When they graduated, I worked with them again and formed Attention to Detail, who became a star developer in their own right and again, many great enduring friendships.
Were there any problematic projects?
LOL. This was the early days of the industry trying to figure out everything, from how to manage projects, marketing and publishing. So sometimes, project problems were caused because we were still learning how to do third-party development effectively. There were many rogues; so, publishers had to watch out for developers that over-promised and under-delivered, and developers had to watch out for publishers that promised the world then didn’t pay advances or royalties.
I recall one project that got into trouble because our developer disappeared. We made some calls and found out he had gone to Spain using the advance we had paid. We more or less knew where he was supposed to be, so I got on a plane, rented a car and drove around for a couple of days until I spotted his car. I left a post-it on his window and we met-up in a bar!
Our biggest problem was project slippage; developer agrees to get the project built for X pounds in Y months, but it takes longer, and developer invariably runs out of money.
One of our first big titles that was late was our take on the movie Aliens. We ended up bringing all the developers into the Southampton office and literally living there day and night until it was done. We brought in anyone that we thought could help. Sleeping on the floor, eating kebab and chips from the local greasy van. Great days! 😊
Why did you leave Activision and join Argonaut?
I realized I had become quite good at project management through all of these experiences; self-taught but I had figured out the basics and applied it to third-party game development. I started my own consulting company, called PMC (Project Management Consultancy) with the idea that I could offer these services to the industry. I helped those Super Sprint graduates form a company, Attention to Detail, and offered development services (I took an ATD idea called Fred Fixit, and with some redesign, sold it to Lucasfilm as ‘Night Shift’, one of their first 3rd-party projects). Rod Cousens hired me to help some affiliate developers at Activision, including System 3. I was hired by Konix to put together all of the software for the Konix Multi System. Another client was Marjacq, a literary and software agent that represented some of the best developers in Europe. I had met the owner, Jacqui Lyons, when at Activision. Now I was helping her clients better manage their own projects, and one of her star clients was Argonaut.
Why were you only at Argonaut for 15 months? What did you work on there?
It became clear that Argonaut had a lot of great opportunities but were struggling with late delivery. I put PMC on the back-burner, agreed to devote most of my time to Argonaut and help get their software back on track. This freed up the brilliant Jez San, Argonaut owner, to focus on what was known as the Mario Chip, an incredible opportunity he had forged with Nintendo; the outcome of the software side of the business working again and the chip was, of course, StarFox.
I left for personal reasons; the hours at Argonaut were long and it was a 3-hour drive home from their office in Colindale to my home in Wiltshire. About the time of StarFox, we had twins, and I needed to be home more. I wish it had been possible to stay at Argonaut and be home more, but I transitioned out.
And was it about that time you started your own consultancy company, Crush, and what can you tell me about that?
I restarted PMC and immediately began working with a group in Leeds run by Andy Craven and Ian Oliver, the guys behind Vektor Grafix. They were starting a new media group, Global, which included development tools company Cross Products and they wanted a software arm as well, which they were calling Sprytes. I had gotten to know Andy and Ian in prior years when Microprose had hired me as a consultant to help Vektor Grafix finish a title. I opened the Sprytes studio in Newbury, close to where I live, and recruited a small team and another in Leeds. Among the titles created were the Sega CD version of “Populous” for Electronic Arts.
We later parted ways amicably with Andy and Ian, and renamed ourselves Crush!
Did Crush develop games as well? What were your games?
Our first release was “Mortal Coil”, an Aliens/Doom-inspired story game featuring four characters and celeb voices. It did OK but didn’t set the world on fire. We then created a series called ‘Sports Nation’, which was intended to be a fusion of arcade sports with management simulation. The idea was for a virtual world of sports athletes which you and only you would own. You could train your players and trade them if you liked. You would play them in fixtures against other real players. You could build your stadium and get credits for people who virtually tuned in to watch your game, and so build up your grounds. The first title was Soccer Nation. Crush! took investment, generated a lot of publicity and even made our own TV commercial (featuring the unknown Jason Statham!). We did a publishing deal with Sunsoft in Japan. We were unstoppable. Or so we thought, but then two things happened. One, we had built an online game when modems were few and slow, not suited for our performance needs. Two, the Japanese stock market crashed, and Sunsoft pulled their remaining money. We had to close down and sell off our assets. The title was picked up for a song by a small UK publisher who rushed it out and put Jack Charlton’s name on it. It didn’t do well.
How tough was it negotiating through the 90s as technology advanced quickly?
Very exciting! CD-ROM felt like a great creative opportunity as it allowed fast access to a lot of data that could be streamed. We created a lot of interactive film/game prototypes. At one point we invested in a Silicon Graphics workstation, which we thought would revolutionize our speed and production, and while it was impressive, it’s best value turned out to be part of the tour whenever a publisher would come visit, “Oh that? Yes, that’s our Silicon Graphics workstation!”
In 1998/99 you moved to the US – what instigated this?
I had received offers for a while to go work in the States, and after Soccer Nation, here I was with a young family and perhaps the only time I could have made such a move. If I waited any longer the kids would have been too old, and I would be tied working to another company in the UK.
Who were Kodiak and why join them?
Kodiak was formed by the creators of Sculptured Software, one of the premier developers of the 90’s. After they sold to Acclaim, they started Kodiak. EA wanted to acquire them, but EA needed more strength in the management team esp. in project management. They hadn’t been able to find a suitable candidate and a mutual friend introduced us. EA never did complete the acquisition, and Kodiak continued to do work for hire and original IP.
Which games did you work on there?
Published titles included WCW Mayhem, WCW Backstage Assault, Monsters Inc. and Circus Maximus.
How was working in the games industry in the USA different to in the UK?
Cultural differences were the most obvious. We share the same language, but the pronunciation and meanings of words can be different. I received feedback that I was quite blunt in my delivery of direction and messages; while I like to think of this as honesty and clarity, and something never having been an issue in the UK, it was something I needed to pay attention to in the US. Development, however, is development. Each studio does things its own way wherever they are in the world, but ultimately, it is all variations on the same themes: clear communication of expectations, accurate measurement and tracking, quality control, reward great performance, build high performing teams.
You joined Midway in 2002 to work in their sports division. Were you into sports? What was your role?
Once again, it was my ability to project manage and get predictable results that most appealed to Midway; they had sports experts by the dozen (these were the guys that created NBA Jam and NFL Blitz for goodness sake!) and at that time they had all the major sports licenses. But they were struggling getting console games on an annual cycle and kept missing the start of the sports seasons. My role was to run the sports business and in particular, maintain their famous high quality but get the products out on time for each season. It’s ultimately about organization and priorities, empowering teams to deliver against agreed goals. Within a year we were shipping on more skus than ever in time for the sports seasons. The first year after I joined Midway, our percentage of the sports business doubled. Once again, these were super talented developers, many of whom became great friends, they just needed help seeing the big picture among the thousands of tasks and that, it would seem, is what I’m good at.
What did you think of the sizeable shift towards internet gaming at this point?
I’m a fan! I saw the opportunity way back with Soccer Nation. Any technology that expands the creative horizon for developers and the possibilities for players is a good thing in my book. Whether that’s esports, Twitch streaming, mobile and social connectivity, Stadia, whatever, it’s exciting. 5G is going to be another big advance.
After Midway it was over to Electronic Arts for almost a decade. Why did you join them and what was it like working at one of the biggest publishers in the world?
EA SPORTS liked what I did at Midway, having noticed we were taking market share from them (albeit in small chunks). I joined Tiburon in Florida and managed all third-party development as well as their NASCAR and Tiger Woods franchises. I loved my time there.
Learning to work and get results in such a big organization was a challenge and provided significant opportunities. Once you realize the scale at which EA can operate, it is mind blowing. It can be frustrating, but honestly that’s true in any organization.
Did you work on more sports titles there?
I spent about 3 years at EA SPORTS. As part of my work, we acquired new studios. One of which was in Utah, and after acquisition, EA moved it from sports into casual games. I was asked to take the studio over and build it. I also took charge of EA’s North Carolina studio (I had worked with them previously at EA SPORTS). Across the studios, we worked mostly on games as part of EA’s collaboration with Hasbro, finding new digital expressions for their major brands. We created multiple NERF games, Monopoly and RISK, among others. We worked on Nintendo platforms, game consoles, Facebook and created some of EA’s first profitable mobile freemium games.
How did you come to teach games production at the University of Utah? Was that rewarding?
I have always been passionate about developing new talent and in recent years, about giving back and helping the next generation of developers. During the early years at EA Salt Lake, we helped the University of Utah create their gaming program, which has gone on to become one of the best game design and development degrees in the world. After I left EA, the University mentioned that their producer track needed focus and for a couple of years, one evening a week, I taught would-be producers in much the same way I would do if they came to work at one of my studios. It was very rewarding, because I got to meet some remarkable new talent and got to hear the perspective of people new to this industry, for whom the opportunities (and challenges) are quite different than when I started out almost 40 years ago.
How did you come up with the ‘Guv’ moniker and Guv1 consulting?
It was bestowed on me by the team at PMC/Crush! One of my new recruits back then, Martin Carroll, a 3D modeler/animator was from London and he got the nickname ‘Smoke’. He had the habit of calling me ‘Guv’ (like in the Sweeney) and pretty soon everyone was calling him Smoke and me Guv. It stuck; I have been ‘Guv’ everywhere I have worked since.
Back in the late 90’s, I wanted my own website and domain - the obvious one was ‘Guv’. But I couldn’t register a 3-letter domain, so I registered ‘Guv1’. When I left EA and started consulting again, I had the website, so that’s what the business became. Nuts really.
Which of your game/s are you most proud of?
Let me begin this list by saying that I didn’t make any of these games. These were made by teams of talented individuals who I admire and who have remarkable skills. My role was to guide, focus and shape as best I could as part of the team effort:
In no particular order:
Prodigy – Mev Dinc’s best game!
Enduro Racer – Spectrum, chart-topping conversion
Monopoly Hotels – re-imagining of a 100-year old brand and making it relevant in mobile freemium
Night Shift – great concept adapted to the Lucasfilm world
StarFox – the hardware and software innovation
Super Sprint – ST, great conversion
Soccer Nation – years ahead of its time
NERF N-Strike Elite – the first successful shooter on the Wii! Crazy timeline, impossible odds, but a plastic NERF blaster in every pack that was part of the game!
Konix Multi System – the audacious hardware, the dev kits and the software we created for it
Wildlife – unreleased arcade game from EA
Madden 06 – PSP version. Talk about impossible odds.
TMi Trivia – unreleased live trivia game from EA
And conversely not proud of?
None. I know there have been some turkeys commercially, but I loved them all at one point and I take my fair share in their failings.
You’ve been in the industry a very long time – what differences do you see in game development over the years, for better or worse?
In the early days, this was less of an art. We were all learning as we were going along, and mostly we got to wear a lot of different hats. For someone like me, who loves lots of things on the go at once, this was ideal. The closest you might get these days is if you are an indie developer. Otherwise, if you join a medium sized studio or larger, your role is tightly defined and you’re probably more of a specialist than a generalist.
These days processes are better defined, there is a wealth of knowledge to draw upon in just about every area of the business – books, online classes, papers, conferences, technical, creative, commercial.
Back then, it wasn’t big business – today, it really is, it’s mass market entertainment that can draw daily audiences bigger than most TV shows. I think that’s better because games don’t have anywhere near the stigma they used to, either with the average person on the street or in the media.
How do you look back at your time during the Eighties games industry?
A blur!
Anything you regret looking back?
Regrets? I’ve had a few. But then again, too few to mention. (One for the older folk out there!)
Which format was the best and worst to work on?
No single platform stands out in my mind. But, new pre-release hardware the first time you get it, is always the best and the worst in my opinion. The best because everything is to be discovered and the worst because it is often prototype, can burst into flames and can take a long time to master.
Which time do you look back at most fondly?
Honestly, I have enjoyed it all. I got to work with some truly brilliant people and have made some life-long friends. I am always most excited about what I am doing now.
What are you up to these days?
I do a lot of consulting for different groups, most of those projects are under NDA and I can never talk about. But I’m crazy excited about a new company I formed a couple of years ago with friends, called Spark XR, to create a next-generation teleportation device – yes, think Holodeck – which we’re knee deep in development with right now. It’s an insane combination of hardware and software that I hope you’ll see in shopping malls, arcades, movie theaters, museums and more, within the next 18 months.