JASON SOBELL
Profile, March 2001
I started in 1982 with a ZX81, then bought a BBC B with the money I was saving for a car (my parents were not impressed). I was a B.T. apprentice so I only started writing games for fun and a bit of extra cash. I met Kevin Blake and Peter Johnson at a computer club in Newcastle Science Museum in 1983.
After writing Space Caverns I decided to try a scrolling game, and ended up with Caveman Capers. My marketing skills were zero, so we didn't do very well from it, and we were eventually ripped off by the owner of ICON, so that was an unhappy period. After coding for Tynesoft for a while, I borrowed the new Atari development machine from Peter Johnson and learnt 68000. I wrote the first Atari sprite routines longhand on paper while at work then took it home and typed it in. I eventually sold the fast sprite, keyboard, and sound handlers that I wrote to Tynesoft and they were used in some of their games.
After writing a Sports Quiz in 1993 I was completely sick of the whole business, and I've not written since. I miss the good times I shared with the other developers, but not the dealings with the absolute cowboys who ran the publishing houses, who I can only compare to bad music agents. They were only too ready to rip off the (generally naive) young developers, declaring bankruptcy left, right, and centre to line their pockets further and cover their own incompetence.
I now live in Australia with my wife and two kids, and I do consultancy for financial organizations and lecture at the university in a range of subjects from web media and image manipulation to database system engineering. All that game development proved invaluable in the end. I asked the students last week how many of them had ever tried to crack a program, and only one person had! That is a bit scary, but makes you realise how special the low-level understanding of games developers was in its time.
I'm not rich, and I probably never will be because I obviously don't have the 'kill or be killed' mentality required, but I have a nice quality of life and the coffee is great.
Guys, if any of you ever read this, get in touch with me at jason@sobell.net.
Oh, and for the record... Chris
Robson never existed! It was a pseudonym made up by a certain
person who got dragged into a small company writing a Weetabix
game, and ended up bankrupt and owing thousands of pounds. He
made up this name as a cover so he wouldn't lose his royalties.
The photo is genuine though :)
Added May 2001 (make of it what you will!):
I found a photo of myself from when I started programming on
the BBC Micro.
It's a shot taken at the BBC User Show in Crystal Palace. I travelled down on the overnight train, arriving at 4am in Kings Cross. The police picked me up because I was sitting in a café surrounded by drug dealers and prostitutes, and I spent the rest of the night in a nice warm police station.
I met up with Kevin when he arrived by bus, and we went off to the show. The photo shows me signing autographs for the millions of Caveman Capers fans who flocked to the Icon stand after hearing the announcement on the radio that I was putting in a personal appearance.
As you can see, I was wearing
my tasteful 'Caveman Capers' knitted jumper, and there are crowds
of young BBC owners all around me (boy, was I lucky to get out
of there with my clothes on), and rumour has it that Kevin got
off with the bird in the top left of the photo!
http://www.stairwaytohell.com