One was that working for other people, in a large and growing company, was making me an angry, arrogant stress-bunny, and the other was that those little hobby games of mine were earning more than enough for me to comfortably quit and have a second go at being a full-time indie again. Sometimes people asked me if the (elixir) infinite polygon engine was all hype (no, it was actually pretty cool in some ways), or they ask me what it's like to work with Peter, but the truth is, Peter was head of a huge company, and the Movies was just one of three games being worked on when I was there. I have had to buy smaller jeans since leaving Lionhead. I remember introducing the idea of having to buy donuts for the whole team when you broke the build. In some ways, thats inevitable, but I did feel really sorry for him. I remember one coder I worked with was on his first ever game, and after a year of coding, the entire area he worked on was redesigned and it was all binned. RPS: In your case, what made you run for your life? Looking back at your time at Elixir and Lionhead, what do you remember? And what questions about that time are you sick of people asking?Ĭliff: I remember a lot of optimism about the prospects of the games, and also lot of re-doing the same work time and time again. People in games are often creative, and its tough working on someone elses game. It can just be lucky dip that you love FPS games and your employer is doing a barbie expansion pack. Not everyone is actually fleeing something they hate. There are a lot of people who are seeing indie gaming as a stepping stone to getting a job in the main industry, they tend to be the ones doing 3D games, and there are also a lot of people who are curently in the industry doing sneaky games on the side, either as an eventual route to doing their own thing, or maybe because they feel creatively trapped in the day job by working on someone elses idea. Do you think that's fair?Ĭliff: Yes, it's pretty fair. And then you hav the ones who spent some time inside the industry, and then ran for their lives. You have the ones who have never worked inside the mainstream industry in any way whatsoever. RPS: Looking at the indie space, I kind of see two sorts of developers -(And I know "two kind of people" generalisations are lazy, but bear with me). Nobody knew what games they would and would not like. On the ZX81, there was not much in the way of defined genres. I love the immersion in an FPS, I love the stats based geekiness of sims, and I love the feeling of total pwnage when winning in an RTS.
#Hate it or love it cliff Pc
In the modern PC age, I've gradually drifted into just sim /strategy, FPS and RTS games as a player. Back in the early days I loved all games, platfomers, flight sims, arcade, everything. How awesome would that be? Although it might make the mag a tad heavier.
#Hate it or love it cliff code
Imagine PC gamer printing the source code to Bioshock. That goes way beyond what we have now, where PC magazines have limited modding tutorials.
The computer magazines had source code listings printed in them. Back then everyone who played games was encouraged to make them.
I guess the ZX81 home computer was what made me think I could do it, although I only learned BASIC, not machine code. My first console was a binatone pong machine (with variable bat size control). I could make these".Ĭliff Harris: First game I played was pong, so its pretty far back.
RPS: Starting at the beginning, what are your roots in gaming? What first attracted you to games, and what sort of games were they? And was there a point where you remember thinking. We talk about his origins, how he feels he's grown up as a developer, how he actually manages to feed his cats and how he believes a game can be "anything". And, as anyone who's every followed him in a forum thread, he's not a man for mincing his words. Having experienced both indie and mainstream development, produced a string of games - Democracy, Kudos, Rock Legend - that are clearly chasing after a grail seperate from the majority of developers and managing to earn a living from what may at first appear niche games, Cliff has a lot of things to say. Cliff "Cliffski" Harris has been quietly working up his own catalogue of indie-games since leaving Lionhead, shortly after they shipping the Movies. Behind the faux-futuristic moniker of Positech stands one man.