Chris Satchell
Chris Satchell: It totally depends which direction you tackle. I don't... I really don't know any academics who just go into their course and say 'hey, I just want to pack people in. I don't really care about teaching', I honestly have never met one. People may have that impression – they're really passionate people that really want to teach and... I do like the game development courses as long as they do a good base of other technical skills. But what we find is it's not just game courses. There's a lot of (them) using games as a component to teach other disciplines, whether it's maths, or physics or electronic engineering. And I do think it's started to trend up. You're starting to get more people available for the industry.
SPOnG: I saw you studied computer science at Loughborough. I read you worked on Britain's longest bar...
Chris Satchell: Like any university there's bars owned by the student union, bars owned by the establishment itself. There was a bar called the EHB, which is the Edward Herbert Building bar, and for a while it was in the Guinness Book of Records, because... I sot of use shorthand, but what it was really in the book for is that it had the most taps of any bar. It was this huge L-shaped bar and because it was so busy at the start of term, when all the students came in you couldn't share taps. You'd have 15 members of staff on, each with an exact replica of all the beers and cider, so you wouldn't have to move. Literally, we'd open the door and they'd come in like a flood and they would be like 10 deep all night. You'd take a pound a pint, and we'd be like 15, 17,000 pints in a night, just pouring and pouring. It was awesome! I really enjoyed working there, actually. I made a lot of good friends. Better than some of the jobs I've had.
SPOnG: Any of those jobs in games?
Chris Satchell: No, I'm thinking more like when I used to work on a farm and clean out and feed pigs. What I've found is that when you've worked with pigs a whole bunch, anywhere is a big step up.
SPOnG: I can imagine... You've worked with Bizarre in the past, which has now gone to Activision. Microsoft's retained the rights to the Project Gotham series. Do you know what's in store for the franchise?
Chris Satchell: I actually don't. I really enjoyed working with the Bizarre Creations guys, they're super-talented guys. It's a shame we're not working together at the moment, but I completely understand it's the right thing from both sides. So, I know we have the rights to the Project Gotham series, but I haven't seen anything on it at the moment.
SPOnG: On the subject of games – Halo Wars, are we ever going to see that? It seems to have dropped off the map a little...
Chris Satchell: Oh no, it's definitely... they're working hard on it, they're cranking on that. I think it's gonna be a very good game.
SPOnG: Any idea when it'll be out?
Chris Satchell: I'd be the wrong person to ask. I don't really track the first-party catalogue, other than when they start getting close to coming into cert and we have to do something with it.