I don't, I'm on the Music3 team.

I'm a programmer, but for reasons known only to management I have yet to write a single line of code for the company in almost a year. I love this industry.

The good points? Hmm. Working late and watching piss-poor zombie movies is probably the highlight of my week. Or playing Quake over the network and beating the shit out of everybody in the room. It's nice to kill people, it makes me feel happy. Knives, too.

Erm.. anyway. Bad points would probably be the frustration that comes from knowing what needs to be changed or added to a game to improve it, but having nobody listen to a word I say. Hey, what do I know. I've only got 15 years of game playing experience. It's the only thing I even pretend to know anything about.

A friend mentioned the company was looking for a programmer and I was asked to come in for an interview. Bang, instant job.

Finally getting rid of my Playstation 2 development box. (Which is now back, argh).

Oh god.. erm.. I really can't remember my first game. My parents used to take me to arcades when I was about 5 or 6 and hold me up while I played on them, thrashing the joystick about like a child possessed.

My fondest memories were of my Spectrum and the discovery that with a little bit of BASIC knowledge I could program my computer to print out swear words on the screen. Truly a life altering moment.

Doom. Obvious choice, but for a good reason. I had my first Internet connection just before Doom was released, and the hype and talk about it on the newsgroups really caught my attention. (This was back in the good old days of the net, before the advertising and American kids took over) And for once, I wasn't disappointed when it was released.

Second choice would be Quake, which knocked me up a step from 'gamer', to 'hardcore gamer'. I would be up all night writing mods or building levels, or hanging out on the 'net talking to clan-mates. Sometimes, I'd even have time to play it.

Deus Ex. This game deserves to sell more copies than it has done so far, it's bloody amazing. Stop reading this and buy a copy right now.

All time fave games would include Angband and Nethack. Originally text based role-playing games back in the good old days of Unix, you can now play them with graphical tiles and all kinds of shit. Diablo completely stole the formula from Angband.

Imagine a top-down Diablo (dungeon under town, go down dungeon killing things and collecting items, bring them back to identify, shit pants when you find a really cool unique weapon, etc) but with your character represented by an @ symbol, and the creatures and items as various letters, and you have Angband.

They're still being developed and worked on after all these years, so as you can imagine the gameplay is near perfect, and the level of detail has yet to be matched. Source code available too, of course, with loads of variants around.

Black and White. Black and White. Who isn't? Looks like it will be the mutt's nuts, and I hear it should be out any time now..

Zombie monkeys in cars. With knives.

To be honest, nothing much inspires me. I'm a cynical old bastard who can quite happily tear apart any game written, picking the smallest fault and damning the game to Hades for it.

The thing that pisses me off the most with a lot of games released lately is the opportunities they miss that could have made the game truly great.Just a tweak here or there, or a small feature added could have sent the game flying up the charts to success, instead of dropping to the floor to be smashed under my feet like the shit it is.

I wouldn't bother, if I were you Get a real job and move into a house with some friends, then network your PCs. All the benefits of the gaming industry, but you don't have to do any work.

A lot more advertising within games, probably. And lots of smaller software companies being absorbed into the larger ones. (We can always hope..) Technologically, multiplayer is without doubt the future of gaming. Already we're seeing games released that have no single player mode (or a dodgy shambles of a single player mode).

Multiplayer only games would be a dream for programmers. No AI, no plot, no scripting, etc etc. With high speed 'net access on the horizon (heard that one before..), my ideal game can finally become a reality.

A huge online FPS/RPG mix. Sort of like playing Quake with a thousand other players, but in a real world environment with 'virtual life' elements similar to Ultima Online. It'd kick ass, and I want to be lead programmer when it does.

Hopefully, in the future our lives will be lived out online in a far more interesting universe, while we just sit in front of a monitor eating burgers and Americans.