I used to use Autodesk Animator way back when, so I have a little idea, but not much beyond the CAD stuff. Bell says he works on ShapeManager, which was supposedly forked from an old version of ACIS. Still not really games though, is it?
Well ... no it isn't. I don't see what your point is though? I made a point regarding the below and now you seem to have digressed from that.
David Braben developed (with some assistance from me) "Frontier: Elite 2",and then (with no assistance from me) the notorious "Frontier: First Encounters". I stated my opinions on his conduct regarding these titles in an interview for gamesdomain [Aug 1995].
I subsequently received a letter from Braben's solicitors objecting to three points in the interview including a statement the intended meaning of which was that I understood Chris Sawyer receieved no royalties on "Frontier:First Encounters" but which could be potentially misconstrued to imply that Braben had ceased paying Sawyer his royalties on sales of the PC version of "Frontier:Elite 2".
The letter demanded a "full apology" and "your proposal for compensation and/or exemplary damages".
I immediately requested Games Domain to add a clarification of the intended meaning of the Chris Sawyer remark to the interview. They promptly did so and it remained online till 2002.
Despite the clarification, Braben still attempted to sue me for libel (High Court of Justice Queens Bench, Writ 1995 -B No 2536, 24 Nov 1995). This is indicative of his post-Elite attitude.
From the interview:
8. Why is there a dispute between you and David Braben over Frontier: First Encounters?
Well there's there are legal and moral issues here. Firstly, he's used materials which are our joint copyright while claiming them to be entirely his. I really can't see why he refrained from the simple courtesy of putting "Elite elements copyright Bell and Braben, used with permission of the authors" on his Frontier titles. [STATEMENT DELETED]. Morally, he's not giving credit were credit is due, either for the sake of self-aggrandisement or to somehow try and erode my joint ownership of the materials.
The second issue is less clear cut. I gave him the right to produce add ons and mission disks to the Elite sequel royalty free because I expected such to generate sales of the base game and also felt that such addons would be genuinely new materials for which I was not morally entitled to a percentage. I also agreed that a further sequel would be royalty free because at the time his plan was, or so I thought, to do addons for quite some time and any further sequel to be a wholly new concept. Shortly after "Frontier:Elite 2" David announced an extension disk "Frontier - The First Encounter" (CTW May 2 1994) but then this suddenly turned into a "sequel" to "F:E2" which to all intents and purposes replaces it. So suddenly the sequel to Elite on which I'm getting royalties is going to be replaced by a rewrite on which he proposes to pay me nothing while still using the Elite materials.
I think the reason he did this was that "F:E2" did not have the expansion potential for handling mission disks because it was rushed. I think David realised he had to effectively rewrite the game engine to give it proper expendability. He realised while doing so that by making it a sequel he'd get to charge more for it and could also take advantage of the sequel clause in our agreement to save paying me my share. [STATEMENT DELETED]. Chris Sawyer's PC source was, I'm lead to believe, used as the basis for the conversion that earns him no royalties.
I'm still surprised at David's behaviour here. He could so easily have come to me and said "I'm going to significantly upgrade F:E2. I think a lower royalty would be appropriate.". I'd probably have accepted 5% pre development costs. But he just tried it on from the start.
The lesson I've learnt from this is that I'm a poor judge of character.
Hence my cut-throat comment, where does Ian Bell now making games come into this?
