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Mark Eyles Interview |
When Mark Eyles teamed up
with friends Nick Lambert and John Hollis in the early
Eighties, he helped to form one of the most important
companies in the history of the Spectrum and a pioneering
force in the home computer industry - Quicksilva. In this
interview that Mark gave me in May 2001, he discusses those
days and what he has been doing since.
| Q When you began to help
out Nick Lambert had you ever come across a computer
before?
A Yes, I'd used one a little at college. Not even sure what
sort of computer it was - I wrote a couple of simple programs in
Basic.
Q How long was it until the rest of the original
Quicksilva crew joined the cause?
A John Hollis was already
working with Nick in his spare time, designing the hardware and
working on games. The next full time member of staff was my
girlfriend Caroline Hayon (now Caroline Eyles, we eventually got
round to marrying). Caroline later became the Chief Game Lord. Soon
after this Quicksilva started to earn enough to employ John, so he
packed in the day job and started working for Quicksilva full time.
After this we moved out of Nick's back room and into a small shop in
Northam Road, though Nick and John continued to work from home
coding while Caroline and I ran things day to day. Around this time
we were getting a lot of orders from abroad and so invited Rod
Cousens to join us - he had tried to sell Nick insurance and seemed
to know more about business than the rest of us. He was specifically
brought in to handle overseas sales - though Caroline and I found
his coffee making skills of special use. Rod now runs Acclaim
Europe.
Q I've seen you quoted as saying that there was
nothing romantic about those very early days. Do you still feel that
way?
A Romantic is how you might feel about them looking back. At
the time it was both very exciting and extremely hard work. I
remember paracetamol being essential equipment for getting through
the days.
Q Did any of you ever believe that there was a
future in what you were doing?
A Yes. It never seemed like
it would ever go away again.
Q Did you feel like a
pioneer, that what you were doing was significant, or was it just a
convenient alternative to the dole?
A It did feel pioneering. It
was all so new we were inventing the industry day to day. There were
no guidelines, no existing business models to copy. Very few games
to draw inspiration from. The only way we could see if something
would work was to try it out and learn from what happened.
Q I understand that you are the inventor of the game inlay
blurb. You must be so proud!
A
Oh yes, that was me ;)
This was
a time when very few games were story led. They tended to be more
abstract. When we were putting together the cover for QS Defenda I
suggested to Nick that I write some copy for the inlay to spice it
up a bit, give the game an added dimension. We were tapping into
people's fantasies, giving them the opportunity to pretend they were
that starfighter pilot, adventurer and so on. The cover blurb was a
way of enhancing that fantasy. Another way of putting Quicksilva
ahead of the competition.
This found it's ultimate expression
in a tag line I put together for one of our adverts: 'Free Universe
with Every Tape' (at this time all our games were supplied on
cassette tapes). Another part of selling these fantasies was the
superb artwork we commissioned for the covers of our games, our main
artists being Steinar Lund, Dave Rowe and Rich Shenfield.
Q Was the computer industry the cosy family that it was
sometimes portrayed as, or was it actually bitterly competitive and
incestuous?
A Fairly incestuous and, in the early days at
least, we were all chums. Companies were in friendly competition
with each other. The industry was growing incredibly fast and so at
this time there was a big enough demand to keep everyone in the
black. I guess things started to become less cosy around the time
Quicksilva was sold. The market was becoming more competitive, more
'suits' were arriving.
Q
What prompted the sell-out to Argus
Press, at a time when Quicksilva was in a relatively strong
position?
A As the two major shareholders it was Nick and
John's decision. Personally both Rod and I would have been happy to
keep going but with Nick and John keen to sell that wasn't possible.
Rod negotiated the deal, and did a brilliant job of it. No one else
around at the time got as good a deal as us, though some tried later
when times got a little leaner. In retrospect it was a good time to
sell, right at the peak of the first wave of the industry's success.
People don't always realise that we had our hands tied at
Quicksilva for almost a year during those negotiations. We were
unable to make decisions without referring them to Argus Press first
- I guess they were worried we'd run off with all the good bits and
leave them with nothing. This made running the company very
difficult and meant that we were losing ground during that year
rather than growing at the rate we would otherwise have done. I
guess if things had been different then it would have been great to
have continued to build up Quicksilva, but then if things had been
different maybe there wouldn't have been a Quicksilva.
Q How did things change after the takeover?
A Things continued
under their own momentum for a while. But it was not the same. In
the end Argus Press closed down the office in Southampton and
absorbed Quicksilva into their London offices.
Q When did you
finally get out and what have you done since leaving
Quicksilva?
A I left Quicksilva soon after it was sold and set
up a holography studio and made holograms for a couple of years,
also doing some freelance design work during this period including
going to Holland for a week a month to design games for Aackosoft. I
went on to do much more freelance game design work for companies
like Sega, Electronic Arts, SCI, Melbourne House, Activision,
Microprose, and Hasbro. While doing this I also found time to write
a couple of series for 2000 AD (Wire Heads and ParaSites) and spent
2 years scripting strips for Sonic the Comic, worked on a comic
proposal for Fleetway for a comic called 'Alternity' (a name I came
up with).
I ran a company with Nick Cook (now of Pivotal
Games) called Focus Creative Enterprises supplying design and
graphics to games companies. A little before its time this was. We
eventually called it a day, Nick went to head up graphics at
Microprose and I went back to freelance designing and script
writing.
More recently I teamed up with John Hollis (ex
Quicksilva) for a while and, amongst other things, we worked on some
interesting blue sky technology for some international companies -
massively multiplayer games and also a board game system that
interactively commanded your video recorder. Then I came to
Rebellion as Head of Design, combining designer and producer roles.
Q Is there anything you miss about the old
days?
A Being able to create a game in a couple of months. The small
'cottage industry' style of the industry.
Q Did you have
a favourite Spectrum game?
A
No, I have four games:
The
Sentinel - A completely original classic and graphically
breathtaking on the Spectrum.
Ant Attack - Still a classic
and you could tell that it was created by a sculptor. Written by
Sandy White.
Time Gate - Star Raiders (by Atari) on the
Spectrum, predating Elite. Written by John Hollis.
Though my
overall favourite is a game I designed for Activision/Electric
Dreams: Aliens - Claustrophobic and scary. To my knowledge the first
use of a 360 degree wrap around background to give an illusion of
playing in a 3D world. Incidentally Nick Cook did the graphics for
this.
Q Did you have any favourite industry
characters?
A Mel Croucher's Piman.
Q What became
of Nick Lambert? Do you still stay in touch with him or the rest of
the team?
A Sadly Nick died a couple of weeks ago (April
2001). Though he did go out in style: After windsurfing and swimming
on a sun soaked beach in Bonaire (in the Caribbean) for a couple of
hours he layed down at the edge of the water and died (of a heart
attack). He was 49. We will all miss him. I still see John and Rod.
Sometimes we reminisce :)
Q
Do you have any anecdotes about your
Quicksilva days that you can share?
A Well there was that time
when we got chased around Singapore by software pirates after
discovering the Sinclair distributor was pirating our games...
Q And on a personal note, Alien vs Predator gave me the
willies like no game, before or since, so keep up the good work at
Rebellion.
A Keep a look out for Wardog, a new RPG we're
working on at Rebellion. It's also going to be a comic strip. Oh,
and also on a personal note can I say hello to my boys Joe and Tom?
My thanks to Mark for the
interview. You can find his website here.
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