- Steve Cain
- Ally Noble
- John Gibson
- Karen Davies
- Graham Everitt
On 9th July 1984 the Imagine bubble burst. The crew that become Denton weremade redundant, and suddenly found themselves embroiled in the wranglings overthe rights toBandersnatch. It seems the Receiver couldn’t believe therewas so little to show for the mega hyped games — little more than one diskexisted, with most of the storyline and concept still inside the heads ofprogrammers and designers.
Bandersnatch and Eugene Evans went to Fireiron, the company foundedby Messrs Lawson and Hetherington, and after a few week’s planning DentonDesigns was set up by the Founding Five. The company’s first, and major capitalinvestment was in the Sage computer systems used by Imagine to develop games,which download code into the target home micro. An office, a telephone, someclean paper and a few sharp pencils later, Denton Designs were in business.
‘We just sat down and rang round the major software companies offering ourservices,’ Karen Davies explains. ‘We were surprised at the reaction we gotfrom companies — it was invariably favourable. Business-wise people werenaturally a bit wary at first, because of the Imagine reputation, but asprogrammers and artists we had a good grounding and reputation, and peoplehad heard of us through the Imagine name.’
Although Denton Designs was set up as a traditional company, which meanssomeone has to be Company Secretary, someone else Chairman and so on, it is runvery much as a co-operative. There are no immediate plans for Dentons topublish software in their own right — the company acts very much as afacilities house offering the full range of services from straight conversions,through game design to an all-in parcel including conceptualisation, gamedesign, programming and package design.
‘We all work together,’ Karen told us, ‘we’re not frightened to criticiseeach other’s work, and no-one’s a prima donna. There’s no laying down of laws,with someone saying “I’m one of the directors so you must do what I say”.’Which would be difficult — everyone in the team is ranked equally as ‘Director’on the Denton business cards, and nobody’s absolute boss in the office. ‘Weenjoyed working together and writing games together at Imagine, which is why wedecided to stay together and continue writing games — it’s good fun,’ sheadded.
Argument, discussion, debate are all shared, with everyone participating inthe work of the company as a whole. Each program, whether it is a conversionjob (‘we try to squeeze them in between big projects as they pay the wages’) ora major piece of work is treated as a project. Specific staff or freelancehelpers are assigned to a project, but in reality everyone gets a say in thefinal product, passing comment as the work progresses.
So far Denton have convertedSpy Hunter for the Spectrum and arecurrently working on implementingRoland Rat on the same machine.Gift From The Gods was their first large project, for Ocean. David Wardof Ocean wanted a new game in time for Christmas and went to Denton who putforward a couple of ideas. A choice was made, and Denton produced the game onschedule.
Frankie Goes to Hollywood, previewed on the following pages by DashEd himself, was born from a very basic brief indeed: ‘We don’t want lots ofFrankies running around, otherwise it’s up to you’ is the gist of what DavidWard passed on as his requirement. And the end result is going to be prettyknockout, I assure you...
Shadowfire, commissioned by Beyond and reviewed fully this issue, isthe first major piece of work executed by Dentons that’s already in the shops.‘Lords of Midnight was one of the main spurs to Denton Designs — MikeSingleton is my hero,’ Steve Cain explained, ‘Lords of Midnight is oneof my favourite games and it prompted us to approach Beyond. We did everythingonShadowfire including the packaging design, story and system.’
‘We did the visuals and a full specification for the game and then talked itthrough with Beyond,’ Karen added, ‘then we went away and changed a lot of it...Beyond were well impressed when we showed them the finished product.’
‘We do what we want to a degree — and it’s nice to be able to choose who wework for — before signing contracts we talk about how we like to work, takingresponsibility for the end product.’
‘People are often a bit taken aback when they come and see us for the firsttime,’ said Ally as we stumbled into their offices after the drive from Ludlow,made near-fatal by an utter nerd who nearly had us in a ditch, ‘we’re all a bitof a mixture... we’re all different.’
Wacky and zany, zany and wacky? Well not really, just not quite fully paidup members of the collar and tie brigade. Steve Cain could be described as a‘cyclical hippy’ — he can’t make his mind up whether he should grow his hair orkeep it short. Every so often he scampers out, gets a super smart haircut andbuys up half of Liverpool’s mens outfitters’ stock. Then his hair grows, andthe image slowly changes back.
Karen, Ally and Steve all have an Art College background. Karen and Ally arethe design mainstays who, like Steve, got involved in computer screen designwhen they joined Imagine. Karen, who was working on the C64 screens forFrankie when we arrived, trained in textile design which led her to ajob in France. This was followed by a spell freelancing in Italy, then shereturned to this country and was ‘headhunted’ into Imagine.
Ally Noble, on the other hand, the Queen of the Spectrum Screen (she’llmurder me when she reads that) was a community artist type person who wasworking on a travelling video workshop project before going to Imagine for aninterview. Ally met Steve Cain in the interview room and immediately startedchatting to him about old times when they were at Liverpool Art Collegetogether — and despite their unusual approach to formal interviews, they wereboth hired!
Of the quintet, John Gibson’s progress into games programming is probablythe most spectacular. He was working in Cornwall installing suspended ceilingsin offices when he decided to give it all up, move to Liverpool and enrol on aTOPS computer programming course. Newly qualified when he finished the course,John seemed destined to serve his time in the data processing bowels of somelarge company’s mainframe installation.
The ‘cyclical’ hippy — SteveCain (top) with longer hair in an earlier publicity shot
Then, over a pint, he was asked by an Imagine person if he was a machinecode programmer. ‘Yes,’ John replied, and he was hired on the spot. A few weekslater he was zooming round the streets of London in a company Porsche, gettingpaid a handsome salary for writing code on the Spectrum and watching the fireextinguisher fights in Chateau Imagine with amazement.
‘I couldn’t believe it,’ he said, ‘suddenly I’d got the kind of job my Mumwas always on at me to get.’ Sadly it didn’t last too long — now there’s noteven a company C5 at Denton, and serious work is going on all day (and intoquite a few nights).
Graham Everitt — ‘Kenny’ to all his friends, including his wife — wasoriginally a carpenter. Like John, he changed trades and worked on a freelancebasis for Imagine writing their systems software and developing utilities forthe Sage machines. Now with Denton, Kenny is still the Main Man when it comesto sorting out the Sages, but he’s started work on games programming too, andis currently working onFrankie.
Dentons have no plans to publish software in their own right just yet,although Karen admitted ‘the more we get into it, the more we want to see agame on the shelves with the Denton Design name on it.’ It’s a matter ofeconomics ultimately. Denton is not in a financial position to publish justyet. ‘We had originally planned to sit down at the start of this year andassess our progress and make decisions about where the company should begoing,’ Kenny explained, ‘but somehow we never quite had the time. In thelonger time we would like to bring out our own titles.’
Shadowfire 2 and a high speed, arcade-action sports game withdetailed animation are the next two projects on the Denton Drawing board. Acomplete system, which could be used for educational programs as well as forgames, is under development at Denton.Shadowfire, with its icons ispart one,Frankie with the windows is part two andShadowfire 2,which will have animated graphics controlled through icons will form partthree.
A churlish observer would point out that icon driven software and windowszooming out of the screen are hardly innovative in themselves, having beenwell-established in business software. But it’s the implementation that counts,and the way these features are incorporated into the game design which makesthe Denton product outstanding. Anyway, no-one else had the programming orconceptual skills to incorporate windows in an arcade-adventure type of game,nor did the idea of having a non-text adventure see the light beforeShadowfire.
Not surprisingly, the Five at Denton get a little peed off with the‘Ex-Imagine’ label that is so easy to apply them. After all, they’re just asmuch ex-ceiling fitters and ex-community artists. No. Given the standard oftheir product, the innovative qualities of their game designs together with theenthusiasm they have for the job they do (which shows through in the softwarethey produce) it’s much fairer to say that Imagine was ‘Pre-Denton’. Sothere.