★ AMSTRAD CPC ★ SOFTOGRAPHIE ★ COMPANY ★ CREATIVE SPARKS ? ★ |
| Games - Company | Creative Sparks |
Graham Taylor talks to Sandy Mackenzie of Creative Sparks Thorn EMI is a very very big company. In fact there aren't many companies bigger than Thorn EMI. Amidst the household appliances and Duran Duran can be found the Thorn EMI home computer software division. Creative Sparks. Creative Sparks is not big. In fact, in terms of full-time staff Creative Sparks is small - I mean what would you call a total of four employees? Of course, it isn't quite that simple. For one thing the programs the company releases are all bought in from outside programmers - usually freelancers who have done work for the company in the past. Nevertheless, all the organisation, commissioning, development ideas, program evaluation and administration happens in a smallish office in central London. Sandy Mackenzie, an amiable Scotsman, heads the operation and I asked him about Creative Sparks'relationship with Thorn. "Although we were funded by Thorn we operate pretty independently. We usually don't need to refer elsewhere for decisions and we operate our own budget now." The Thorn involvement in computer software happened quite a while before Creative Sparks was set up last April, developing from interactive video projects. Sandy and another member of the team, Peter Chandler, had been with Thorn from that time. Sandy: "The home computer software happened by accident and grew out of interactive video -people tend to forget that before Creative Sparks, Thorn had already been successful with Atari products like Submarine Commander and Jump Jet Pilot." The reason Thorn EMI computer software became Creative Sparks is simple: "Creative Sparks is a better name." The other big change about this time was the making redundant all the in-house programmers. Why was this? "Well, many of them are still employed by us on a freelance basis - we simply decided that using a system of freelances, putting people together where necessary to form temporary teams and having a wide catchment area for different kinds of skills was a better way of doing it." Creative Sparks is, with the occasional exception, fairly strict about the machines it supports, ie, the Commodore 64 and the Spectrum. "It really is a two machine contest at the moment, although the Amstrad CPC 464 is beginning to look very strong. Certainly those are the only machines I anticipate strongly supporting next Christmas and perhaps some time beyond that." The most successful Creative Sparks title to date has been Danger Mouse in Double Trouble, an arcade game based closely on the very successful children's cartoon series. It would seem like a classic example of powerful Thorn muscle buying up expensive TV rights, but it isn't quite like that. "Actually we have known Cosgrove Hall, which developed the TV cartoon, for a long time, and the game was created using its designs for character animation and the like. The whole look of the game was very much the result of its efforts." Products for the new range will come from the 'almosts'- the programs sent to Creative Sparks that aren't quite good enough for the full price range. "We get dozens of submissions; some of them are obviously pretty poor, but there are quite a lot which are good, but perhaps not as original as we'd like. Still, we can put out some very playable games for a low price." Licensing films, books and the like is obviously something that is uppermost in Creative Sparks'minds, since Thorn owns a fair number of likely titles already in its extensive film division, but I wondered if there might ever be a tie-up with another major area of Thorn interest - records. The idea of linking a group to a computer game is obviously a very potent one and Thorn EMI has a great many successful rock groups on its labels. Sandy however, was non-committal. "You can say that it is a pretty obvious thing to look into but there are problems with domg it properly. "If we do a link-up with a group we would want them to be heavily involved with the project and it's very hard pinning down a big name group for the amount of time it would take - the other problem is that the definition rock groups are about music and it still isn't possible to do music really well on a home computer." One thing Sandy is backing is a shift in the computer market away from games. "I think the market is changing - the growth rate is slowing. "The old styles of game won't do on the new powered machines coming out this year. Obviously games will have to get even more sophisticated but really, I think the future will lie with personal development programs and greater use of network links. "We have two new programs coming out roughly along these lines, a sophisticated Painter program for the Spectrum and a music program for the musically illiterate should be around by autumn. In a sense 'self improvement' packages are very much what's already happening in America." I wondered what the Thorn EMI higher command make of Creative Sparks. "I think some of them don't realise we're part of the same company. Working here is not like working for the usual large international concern - we all have a definite commitment to what we're doing and we have to be very flexible in our outlook. It's a weird industry when you come to think about it."
|
