Interviews// Judge Dredd writer: Gordon Rennie

SPOnGIf you were given carte blanche to design the game of your dreams, what would it be?

Gordon Rennie: Well, it would probably be Tomb Raider: Lara Goes Round to Gordon's House, but I realise the fairly limited market appeal there. I've actually already been hired to work on another dream project - a new next-gen game based on a big SF franchise - which the spoilsports won’t let me talk about for now - and I've already got one Star Wars game under my belt. And, trust me, you haven't lived until you've experienced the intense but deeply sad thrill of seeing your name scrolling up the screen with the Star Wars theme music playing over it.

My dream game would probably have Romans in it. Romans, and monsters. Or be a painfully accurate war-sim game of the 1565 Great Siege of Malta. Boy, that one would just fly off the shelves, wouldn’t it?

SPOnGWhat talents could you bring to creating a game? If you had a job with a games development company what would you want your job title to be?

I actually work more and more in games development these days, writing game plots, scripts, dialogue etc, with the comic writing starting to become a bit of a sideline. I’m still freelancer scum, but I’ve been offered a few full-time positions recently, which I’ve to turn down because of relocation issues, and because most employers aren’t keen on their employees working from the pub on their laptop, as is not an uncommon occurrence in my working week.

If I did ever give up the freelance existence, it would only be if they lured me over with a job title like ‘Chief Executive in Charge of Stella Artois Quality Assurance’.

SPOnG What do you think of the recent decision by the BBFC to ban Rockstar's Manhunt 2 game, or video game violence in general?

Gordon Rennie: To be honest, I don’t really care. 20 years ago, all the hand-flapping was over ‘video nasties’, many of which are now deemed to be perfectly acceptable [i](Driller Killer for example is available at retail, uncut… Ed.)[/i]. Before that, it was punk rock. Before that, early Rock’n’Roll. Decades before that, some people genuinely thought that the sales of sheet music - no, really - would be responsible for the degeneracy of modern civilization. Some people will always find an easy target to blame, rather than look for the harder answers.

As for Rockstar, built-in controversy has always been part of their brand identity. With Manhunt 2, they just got more than they bargained for. Possibly deservedly so, since they must have known what they were doing after the trouble stirred up by the first game. That said, it did look like a better, more dynamic game than the fairly relentlessly dreary and drab-coloured Manhunt 1.

Watch out for Gordon's first column about video games starting in SPOnG tomorrow...