wfmag.cc \ 19company to license its game World Cup Football,
because the publisher had recently secured the
rights to make a game for the 1986 World Cup in
Mexico. The plan was to release Artic’s World Cup
Football under another name with the license
attached, then promote it as a brand-new title,
and not let anyone see it until its release.
“I was really uneasy about this, but we were
effectively bankrupt,” Cecil recalls. “So I’m quite
ashamed to say we took the money. It was ajob, but it wasn’t right. And the game came out,
and people realised it was Artic’s game and
there was quite a backlash. But the packaging
was unbelievably beautiful, and that’s what US
Gold did.”TALKIN’ ‘BOUT A REVOLUTION
After a few years in the world of publishing,
working for companies like US Gold and
Activision, Sean Brennan over at Mirrorsoft
managed to entice Cecil back into game
development with an offer to potentially publish
some of his ideas. Along with Tony Warriner,
David Sykes, and later Noirin Carmody, Cecil
established the studio Revolution Software and
got to work on a concept to pitch.
It was around this time something happened
that could have changed gaming history.How Revolution survived the British games industryInterface
“Our lawyer went to prison... and he was
the most honest of the whole lot”THE FALL OF ARTIC
Cecil continued making adventure games for
Artic over the next few years, but eventually,
the company found itself in a compromising
position. Not only had larger publishers like US
Gold and Ocean started to push out smaller,
more amateurish operations, but the company
had found itself employing a number of
suspect characters.
“We were very naïve,” says Cecil. “We were
19 or 20. Our lawyer went to prison... and
he was the most honest of the whole lot.
Our accountant, I remember, was so laissez-
faire. He’d walk in and he’d say, ‘How much tax
do you want to pay? None? OK.’ And he’d come
back, and we’d paid no tax. We had a really bad
bunch of people around.”
After Artic ended, Cecil went on to start a new
company, Paragon Programming, working on
games for US Gold, before eventually jumping
ship and joining the publisher, becoming Head
of Development.
“I was really looking forward to turning up
and being the Head of Development,” he recalls.
“Then I turned up and there was me, a tester,
and a part-time masterer. And that was it.
And the interesting thing is... people had rather
a contempt for their audience at the time. They
believed it was all in the marketing and all in the
licensing. That was where the big people were.”
He gives an example. Prior to Artic’s closure,
US Gold’s Geoff Brown approached the
Visiting exotic locations has
always been at the heart of
the Broken Sword series. Cecil has over 30 years’ experience working in the games
industry, for the likes of Artic Computing, US Gold, Activision,
and his own company, Revolution Software.