The smiley man who made Elite is going to be talking about his world, at BAFTA, next week. It's a fiver, and for that you get a glass of booze, too (champagne, apparently, there's a "Taittinger reception").
Celebrating 25 years since the release of ground-breaking 3D space simulator Elite, British development legend David Braben reveals his unique perspective on combining cutting-edge technology with innovative gameplay. David is founder and chairman of independent Cambridge developer Frontier, whose releases include the LostWinds launch title for Nintendo's WiiWare digital download service, and the BAFTA-nominated Dog's Life and Wallace & Gromit In Project Zoo.
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Went to this last night, it was pretty interesting. An odd question which I didn't think about until it was answered there was "what (the hell) do Lost Winds and Elite have in common that they could be made by one guy?". They come from different times, but one was a story-driven child-orientated 2D puzzle platformer; the other was a trade-centred sandbox 3D shoot-em-up.
The answer is technology. Both are demonstrations of the interesting new stuff we can do with technology. But not in the same was as Crysis or Wolfenstein; more in the sense of Another World or Super Mario Bros. Personally I'm often cynical about the wii; it got so much attention, but in the end only distracted people with smigeons of innovation from the truly innovative things being done pretty much every day in the Indy community. Lost Winds is the only exception; and Dave Braben, though he doesn't know it, may be the only vocal game designer who ever believed in the Wii.
Posted by: Hamish | September 16, 2009 at 01:16