Talking with game designers of the present and of the past
Everyone can identify that one definitive moment, the tiny magic second when a game managed to turn them from a casual part-timer into a full-time passionate gamer. Perhaps that passion, over the years, has been replaced by something else, but that hardly factors in this discussion. What matters is that mystical moment where everything else…
When I first ventured into the story of Trecision and found the name of Rick Gush mentioned by some of the developers, I did wonder. What was one of the writers of games like Dune II, Lands of Lore II and The Legend of Kyrandia doing in Italy, working for a relatively small and little known…
In the second part of the interview with former Lucasarts graphic and designer Larry Ahern, we discuss his work on the failed Full Throttle follow-up, his decision (and subsequent regret) to work with Microsoft, the indie experience with Insecticide and, finally, his time at Disney. Click here for the first part of the interview. Following up a…
In the 90s, Italian software houses struggled: from Simulmondo to Trecision, everyone was trying their hardest to stay afloat. The Italian market, despite the overall okay sales numbers, was always small, providing little funds and visibility to those that tried their hand at developing games. Also, even after 1993, piracy was still very much a…
I had the pleasure of speaking to John Holder, founder of the company Leader, in 1987, among the major publishers of video games in Italy. John would then leave the company in 2009, with Leader then closing down in 2012. For the sake of the interview, I was curious to ask him about what was…
After its first steps in a difficult industry plagued by piracy, as observed in the second part of the retrospective, Trecision managed to release two titles internationally, Nightlong and The Watchmaker, but crisis seemed to strike the studio between 1999 and 2000. With the overall idea of making a fully 3D adventure taking a long time to…
The Genesis Temple Podcast – Season 1 I did not really plan to start doing a podcast, the podcast planned to start doing me, apparently. There have always been so many people in the industry I wanted to have a chat with that, after the first episode was over and done with, I had a…
The Genesis Temple Podcast Episode 8 For the eighth episode of the Genesis Temple podcast, together with fellow gaming journalist Jesse Gregoire, I welcome indie developer Julia Minamata to discuss her progress with The Crimson Diamond (download the first chapter here), along with her ideas for the main character’s background. We also touch upon her…
In the first part of the retrospective for Trecision, the software house tested the water of the Italian gaming market of the early 90s by releasing two titles for Amiga, then moving on to PC. Unfortunately, no Italian publisher seemed to allow them enough resources to invest and enlarge the team. In a country where…
The Genesis Temple Podcast Episode 6 In this sixth episode of the never ending saga of “what could go wrong with my audio today”, I sit down with Jay Tholen to converse about various topics, ranging from Hypnospace Outlaw (did you read my article yet?) and how its overall sense of community was in someway…