After
arriving at the Magnetic Scrolls building, we started upward, and
entered the office. It was a large office spread over several considerable
rooms, mainly occupied by a couple of desks on which some Apple systems
and a VAX minicomputer were located. Some of Anita's colleagues looked
at us as if they were amazed at the new boundaries discovered in the
'how low can a reporter go' field. On one of the walls of the biggest
room, a map of an adventure game (probably the upcoming one about
which they were pretty secretive) hung on the wall, together with
some (excellent) screenshots of its various locations (that had foto-quality
to say the least). Later, when we tried to take pictures there, we
were forbidden to do that - probably because of that map. Looking
as if we had just played "Dungeon Master" - not the game but the REAL
thing, with some extra sun in it - we let the backpacks slide to the
ground, carefully avoiding them (or us) being eaten by a menacing
bull terrier that roamed the office. We stretched our backs, and generally
acted like 80-year olds that just got out of bed. When I wanted to
let the animal smell at my hand, someone was just quick enough to
prevent me from getting a mistrust towards dogs for the rest of my
life. "No," I heard a rather resolute voice warn me, "she bites."
The dog was locked in another room, from which it would continue to
bark threateningly until it was released - just before we left rather
hastily. That same someone (I never did get his name) directed us
a couple of rooms further, where Anita Sinclair was patiently waiting
for us to be a nuisance to her by pulling off our interview. She was
a charming woman with long brown hair, wearing a 'Magnetic Scrolls'
T-shirt that I eyed with a certain greed. It was 12:20 on my watch
as we sat down, still sighing and trying to relax a bit so that all
that perspiration would dry up on our foreheads. We started the interview
quickly, because Anita had an important meeting that she would actually
have to be at in ten minutes - lucky for us, she would not be too
punctual on this one and grant us quite some more time.
Please tell us your place and date of birth - you needn't say the
date if you don't want to.
Anita: I don't mind. It's the 20th of November
1962, in Baconsfield.
How
did you end up in the computer industry?
Nobody else would have me (laughs). I
just found computers interesting, and here I am. I didn't follow any
courses - it's all self tought.
What
are your other interests besides computers?
Dogs, music, books...eh...more music.
What
do you dislike most about the software industry?
The customers....no..that's a joke. The
journalists. No (laughs). The hype, I suppose; games that don't live
up to the expectations. Licenses. I hate licenses. Licensees should
be shot, because all the money goes into the license and not in the
program.
What do you consider to be the best game ever launched on the ST?
"The Pawn" (laughs). On the ST? Er..."Dungeon
Master".
And
the lousiest game?
I don't see lousy games.
What have you done on various computers upto now?
Well, what have we done. We have done
five games, which are "The Pawn", "Guild of Thieves", "Jinxter", "Corruption"
and "Fish", and we're now working on a sixth product, which is very
new and very different. But that won't be out until next year. It
will have graphics and it will be absurd - even more absurd than "Fish".
Where
did you get the plot of "Fish"?
Do you like "Fish"? (we both nod) Great
game, isn't it? It was done by three guys, Phil, Pete and John, and
it's very strange; Pete is a taxman, Phil is a journalist and John
is a musician. And it's a strange combination. They designed the game
and it's completely weird. And we had two guys of us working with
them, who are also slightly weird. So we had five guys working on
it and it's a great product. My favourites are the "Guild of Thieves"
and "Fish".
Do
you know a nice joke?
I need a glass of milk for my joke. But...er...no.
I am afraid not.
What car do you drive?
An Audi Quattro.
What
tools do you/does Magnetic Scrolls use to program, draw, etc.?
It's all in-house. Well, we use some
IBM software, but we develop our adventures in our own language. Our
old pictures (the ones of all adventures upto now, ED.) were done
under "Neochrome"; the new pictures (of the secretive sixth product,
ED.) are done using tools we developed ourselves again.
What's
your favourite book?
Marquez' "A hundred years of Solitudes".
What's your favourite film?
"The Revenge of Baron Munchhausen".
What's
your favourite food?
Beer (laughs). No. Eggs'n'bacon.
And
what about your favourite drink?
Sake (the Japanese stuff, ED.).
Your
favourite band, then?
I have none. But I like classical music.
My favourite composer is Schostekovitch.
Who's
the most interesting person in the software industry, do you think?
Hmmm....just thinking. It's rather difficult.
There used to be some fascinating people that were constantly astounding
but they have all disappeared. Er...most interesting, you said? (We
nod, after which there is quite a long pause) I suppose the most interesting
person is the chap who does all the Llama stuff, Jeff Minter. Yeah.
He's interesting.
What
are your main sources of inspiration?
Music, and taking the dog for long walks.
I now program little, but I am involved in PR and the creative side
of the new game - not the design of the game itself but the design
of the look of the game, the way it works.
What's
your dog called, by the way?
Murdoch. As in 'Rupert Murdoch'. I named
her after him, actually (yes, the dog's a 'she', ED.).
What
program are you currently working on?
I can't give a name, as that would give
the plot away. It's got a parser. It's got text. It's got graphics.
It's massive. It's going to be about 3 megabytes, crammed on two or
maybe three ST disks. It's a big product. It's a very appealing product,
and it's quite easy to play. It's slightly totally absurd.
What's
your opinion about software piracy?
Hmm....I don't think that we can abolish
piracy. I think it exists, and I feel in some way it's probably a
good thing, because we all listen to the radio, and you will buy what
you like - we also borrow books. Piracy is just a worse version of
that. I think people who rip off our games and who play them and enjoy
them, have a good chance of buying one of our future products. What
I absolutely detest is people who simply keep games. People who simply
have thousands of games - they don't play them, they've got them,
so that they can say to someone "hey look at me - I have a million
games." Those people I'd like to see hanging by their earlobes. Because
they have no right to my product. People who rip it off and play it
and like it might buy one of our future products. I don't like that,
but I can't stop it. And we obviously try to stop people from doing
that, because we have to earn our living. But I think that people
who collect games should be shot.
What
do you think of people who have solved your adventures in three days
(like Math Claessens)?
In three days? Has he done "Corruption"?
Well, if he can solve our games in three games he's lucky. Most people
don't ever solve some of our games, judging by the letters we get.
Infocom
went broke recently. Do you now employ some of those people?
(Laughs rather secretively) We're talking
with them.
How
do you design your adventures?
We have three development systems. We've
got the VAX, which runs UNIX, and all the machine-dependent stuff
gets developed on that. So when we've finished writing a game, we
then upload it to the VAX, which does all the cross-compiling for
us for the different machines. We then have Mac II's and Xenix machines,
which run AU/X and XENT, and we have sub-development systems on that.
All our tools are written in C.
What's
your worst habit?
I sort of bite my nails, but I can also
be a truly irritating person. I can never give up, and that really
annoys people. I gave up smoking but I drink a lot of coffee.
What's
it like to be female in a world generally dominated by males?
I don't notice. I mean, there's no sexuality
involved. There is obviously interest in me because I'm female, but
I don't notice it very much. I think it could be an advantage instead
of a disadvantage. But it's not something I use: I don't go out of
my way to flirt with people or to try and use my femininity above
my skills. Magnetic Scrolls, it could be run be a man. It would have
the same presence because the products are so good. You know, if we
would have substandard products I would have to take my clothes off
occasionally. "Buy my product, hey!"
What's
your connection to Clive Sinclair (the notorious inventor of Sinclair
Computers and various other gadgets, who is braincrunchingly intelligent)?
None from a family point of view apart
from the fact that we have the same surnames. He's just a good a friend
of mine and I've known him for quite a few years.
What
about you playing poker together?
(Laughs) Yeah, once every two months.
We're doing it for five or six years now. He doesn't organise them,
and nor do I; it's this chap that organises it. It's more a social
call than anything else.
Don't
you grow tired of doing adventures and wouldn't you like to do something
different for a change?
Yes. We'd like to do different things.
We are doing different things. But we needed to establish ourselves
first. I love adventures. I love playing them. But I'd like to do
a really nice role-playing game. I'd like to do a really nice graphics-
only adventure. There are lots of things I'd like to explore. And
we'll do so for the next couple of years; you'll see some very interesting
products coming out of here. Games like "Populous" for instance. That's
an amazing game; we'd like to do something like that. It's extraordinary.
What
about that interdimensional agent down there? (Stefan points to a
goldfish in a bowl, in a corner of Anita's office)
Well I had two of them; one of them died
last week. "Fish" is in fact dedicated to its pre-decessor, Slayer.
We
finished the interview off with talking a bit about Douglas Adams
(absurd writer, ED.), who happens to live next door to Anita. She
found him an amazing man, and told us about this special bed that
he had made for himself because he is about 6 foot 6. She also found
him another major source of inspiration. Not much later we left.