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Britsoft - An Oral History
Britsoft: An Oral History is a collective story of the early British games industry. Composed of interviews with thirty-five people who shaped the modern videogame, including David Braben (Elite), Peter Molyneux (Populous), Rob Hubbard (Commando) and Jeff Minter (Attack of the Mutant Camels), it documents a vibrant period of invention in Britain’s cultural history – the start of a new form of entertainment, created on ZX Spectrums, Commodore 64s, Amigas and Atari STs, in bedrooms and living rooms.
The book is a companion piece to the 2014 documentary, From Bedrooms to Billions, and draws from the hundreds of hours of interview footage to find new, untold stories, and craft an original narrative. Through the voices of programmers, musicians, journalists and business people, it traces the making of games such as Dizzy, Elite, Paradroid and Kick Off; and the birth of publishers, magazines and software houses, from Codemasters to Zzap!64.
Britsoft: An Oral History is edited by Alex Wiltshire, former editor of ‘videogame Bible’ Edge, and designed by London-based studio Julia. It includes rarely-seen archive images, such as candid period photographs and magazine ads, which perfectly set the Britsoft scene.
Interviewees: Peter Molyneux, David Braben, Archer Maclean, David Darling, Jeff Minter, Charles Cecil, David Perry, Geoff Crammond, Julian Gollop, Julian Rignall, Dino Dini, Mo Warden, Rob Hubbard, Martin Kenwright, Fred Gray, Martin Galway, Mel Croucher, Mike Montgomery, Rod Cousens, Sean Cooper, Malcolm Evans, Steve Turner, Tim Tyler, Nigel Alderton, Jon Hare, Gary Penn, Eugene Evans, Oliver Frey, the Oliver twins, Peter Stone and Richard Leinfellner, Chris Anderson, Shahid Ahmad, Andrew Braybrook, Geoff Brown.
The book is a companion piece to the 2014 documentary, From Bedrooms to Billions, and draws from the hundreds of hours of interview footage to find new, untold stories, and craft an original narrative. Through the voices of programmers, musicians, journalists and business people, it traces the making of games such as Dizzy, Elite, Paradroid and Kick Off; and the birth of publishers, magazines and software houses, from Codemasters to Zzap!64.
Britsoft: An Oral History is edited by Alex Wiltshire, former editor of ‘videogame Bible’ Edge, and designed by London-based studio Julia. It includes rarely-seen archive images, such as candid period photographs and magazine ads, which perfectly set the Britsoft scene.
Interviewees: Peter Molyneux, David Braben, Archer Maclean, David Darling, Jeff Minter, Charles Cecil, David Perry, Geoff Crammond, Julian Gollop, Julian Rignall, Dino Dini, Mo Warden, Rob Hubbard, Martin Kenwright, Fred Gray, Martin Galway, Mel Croucher, Mike Montgomery, Rod Cousens, Sean Cooper, Malcolm Evans, Steve Turner, Tim Tyler, Nigel Alderton, Jon Hare, Gary Penn, Eugene Evans, Oliver Frey, the Oliver twins, Peter Stone and Richard Leinfellner, Chris Anderson, Shahid Ahmad, Andrew Braybrook, Geoff Brown.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
424 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 26, 2016
Originally posted at http://andrewdoran.uk/blog/2016/05/25...
Beautifully and immaculately presented, this book was a delight from the moment it landed on my doorstep to when I finished the last page. It documents the history of the UK home computer and gaming industry through a variety of first-hand accounts from people who played key roles at the time.
At the age of nine I was given my first home computer, an Acorn Electron, and it changed my life. Looking back and reading this book, I think I was probably just a few years too young to be hit by the first wave of computers such as the Acorn Atom, ZX80, ZX81 etc. when they came out. By the time I started programming in 1986 the games industry was already well-established.
My dad worked at an airport cargo terminal and used to be given sample copies of magazines that were being imported or exported — he used to bring the computer titles home for me to read, which I did so avidly, even when I didn't have any experience whatsoever of the machines they were covering. Despite being an Acorn owner, I have so many fond memories of reading both Zzap! 64 and Your Sinclair, magazines that had a lot of personality and humour running through them. Magazines were a massive part of UK computing culture in the 1980s and Britsoft brought it all back.
The first couple of sections of the book gave me itchy fingers. Although I have a technical Computer Science background my work has taken me in a different direction and I haven't coded in a very long time. Stories of starting off with a BBC BASIC program and slowly refactoring parts of the code into assembly language (in-line with the BASIC) made me want to go and explore again. I never learned much assembly the first time around; in our age of massive computing power it doesn't feel as relevant anymore but there would still be some joy and satisfaction in it.
It is very interesting to look at the industry arc of hundreds of one-person bedroom developers in the early 1980s turning into smaller numbers of ever larger teams, which were eventually culled when the consoles came along at the turn of the 1990s. It hadn't occurred to me that the rise of mass mobile platforms such as Android and iOS coupled with Internet distribution means that we once again have a large number of single-person developers who are able to get their games and applications out there. We've come full circle.
If you have any interest in the history of computer games or home computing in the UK then I strongly recommend this book.
Beautifully and immaculately presented, this book was a delight from the moment it landed on my doorstep to when I finished the last page. It documents the history of the UK home computer and gaming industry through a variety of first-hand accounts from people who played key roles at the time.
At the age of nine I was given my first home computer, an Acorn Electron, and it changed my life. Looking back and reading this book, I think I was probably just a few years too young to be hit by the first wave of computers such as the Acorn Atom, ZX80, ZX81 etc. when they came out. By the time I started programming in 1986 the games industry was already well-established.
My dad worked at an airport cargo terminal and used to be given sample copies of magazines that were being imported or exported — he used to bring the computer titles home for me to read, which I did so avidly, even when I didn't have any experience whatsoever of the machines they were covering. Despite being an Acorn owner, I have so many fond memories of reading both Zzap! 64 and Your Sinclair, magazines that had a lot of personality and humour running through them. Magazines were a massive part of UK computing culture in the 1980s and Britsoft brought it all back.
The first couple of sections of the book gave me itchy fingers. Although I have a technical Computer Science background my work has taken me in a different direction and I haven't coded in a very long time. Stories of starting off with a BBC BASIC program and slowly refactoring parts of the code into assembly language (in-line with the BASIC) made me want to go and explore again. I never learned much assembly the first time around; in our age of massive computing power it doesn't feel as relevant anymore but there would still be some joy and satisfaction in it.
It is very interesting to look at the industry arc of hundreds of one-person bedroom developers in the early 1980s turning into smaller numbers of ever larger teams, which were eventually culled when the consoles came along at the turn of the 1990s. It hadn't occurred to me that the rise of mass mobile platforms such as Android and iOS coupled with Internet distribution means that we once again have a large number of single-person developers who are able to get their games and applications out there. We've come full circle.
If you have any interest in the history of computer games or home computing in the UK then I strongly recommend this book.
December 31, 2015
One of the best books I've read on computer history.
To begin with, this is a beautiful book. Great paper, lovely fonts (although the lime green used for the footnotes is a big hard to read), great layout and a quality binding.
This book was put together from the material used for the From Bedrooms to Billions documentary. As such it's 100% passages from interviews with notable developers the era.
The book uses a neat trick - the passages are laid out in such a format that you can either read it chronologically, jumping from one interviewee to the next as the years progress, *or* you can follow each specific developer throughout the years. An interesting exercise, to say the least.
Apart from that, the book is choke-full of interesting tidbits and inside information, so you get to learn a lot. What's more important, however, is that it oozes sentiment. It really grows on you and you can feel the struggle, excitement, triumph and eventual sadness.
A real must-read for any retro enthusiast.
To begin with, this is a beautiful book. Great paper, lovely fonts (although the lime green used for the footnotes is a big hard to read), great layout and a quality binding.
This book was put together from the material used for the From Bedrooms to Billions documentary. As such it's 100% passages from interviews with notable developers the era.
The book uses a neat trick - the passages are laid out in such a format that you can either read it chronologically, jumping from one interviewee to the next as the years progress, *or* you can follow each specific developer throughout the years. An interesting exercise, to say the least.
Apart from that, the book is choke-full of interesting tidbits and inside information, so you get to learn a lot. What's more important, however, is that it oozes sentiment. It really grows on you and you can feel the struggle, excitement, triumph and eventual sadness.
A real must-read for any retro enthusiast.
December 17, 2016
Wow, this is an outstanding book! Contains content from 35 game-industry founders. Their interviews are broken up into short topic sections which are interleaved with the content from the other interviewees, all of which are chronologically ordered. However, each short section contains forward and backward page references (yes, a "doubly linked list"), so you can also easily skip pages to focus on any given author.
I've talked with a few famous 8-bit game developers over the years, and had never received a satisfactory answer to the question "why did you drop out of the business when 16-bit came along?" Britsoft shows the various ways the deck was stacked against "bedroom developers" from making the jump to later systems.
Not sure what kind of person decides that footnotes in a florescent-green 7ish-point font on white paper is a good design choice. :-)
I've talked with a few famous 8-bit game developers over the years, and had never received a satisfactory answer to the question "why did you drop out of the business when 16-bit came along?" Britsoft shows the various ways the deck was stacked against "bedroom developers" from making the jump to later systems.
Not sure what kind of person decides that footnotes in a florescent-green 7ish-point font on white paper is a good design choice. :-)
March 21, 2021
A fascinating story of the rise and fall of the British games industry of the 1980s. My only warning would be to readi it with a magnifying glass on standby, there's some insanely tiny and light green text on pretty much every page.
May 1, 2021
I purchased this book having not seen the documentary associated with it. I wondered if that would be detrimental to my enjoyment of it, but I don't think it has been. The interviews are edited in such a way that it very much flows like an ongoing conversation. It's a fascinating and fairly funny look at the very early development of an area of the gaming industry I wasn't previously familiar with. Some of the stories — like Peter Molyneux's tale of owning a bean company that was accidentally sent Commodore consoles which he then kept and developed for — are particularly absurd and interesting. The editors do a good job of selecting interview subjects who are representative of a wide range of trajectories, with some of them reaching great heights of success while others' careers are halted by financial failure.
My only complaint is that I wish the book were edited more thoroughly. There are several sections where interviewees begin saying more or less the same thing in different ways for many pages in a row, and those sections got a bit dull. All in all it's a great book though, and I'm unaware of another book that tackles the subject with this level of personal detail.
My only complaint is that I wish the book were edited more thoroughly. There are several sections where interviewees begin saying more or less the same thing in different ways for many pages in a row, and those sections got a bit dull. All in all it's a great book though, and I'm unaware of another book that tackles the subject with this level of personal detail.
December 26, 2020
Surprisingly great oral history, if inevitably repetitive. Probably best if you're already familiar with the rough history and personalities of British videogames and want a *lot* more detail about the business deals and mechanics of how it all got set up.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews