Technocratic Greetings to You

7 January 2015

Congratulations! You are now reading a post by James Dearden, of Technocrat Games, who is writing in the third person but will now stop. I’ve been interested in making games since I was in primary school, my earliest work being “Stonehenge Racing and Gardening”. More presently though, I’m the writer of Technobabylon, soon to be the latest game to come from Wadjet Eye studios!

Adventure games are very much a formative part of my youth. In 2010, while being extremely antisocial and hiding in my apartment in South Korea, I decided to make one for practice. This little game was Technobabylon: Part 1, a one-room “escape” adventure designed to see what I could do with AGS. I started getting messages of support about it, and so I pressed on with another part. Longer and more narrative, this one was the most popular, and by this stage I was starting to realise that there was potential for something bigger in this. No longer could I just pull plot from my backside, I needed to make a plan!

With the third freeware part, I’d started on a framework designed to take place over a number of future instalments, but kept finding myself frustrated. I wasn’t a particularly good artist, and didn’t feel I could adequately express what I wanted to without being good enough. So, what did I do? Did I work hard and practice, until I had the skills I needed to succeed?

Of course not, I found someone who could do it better!

This led to Ben Chandler, AGS veteran and pixel-wizard, joining the project to lend his skills. Through him, I also got talking to Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye. What had previously been an unrealistic best-case (“get Wadjet Eye to publish Technobabylon”) was actually happening! So, I realised I needed to make the best darned Technobabylon I could. Now a full-length game rather than a series of episodes, and with a style that screamed “retro cyberpunk”, Technobabylon has been coming along nicely into something more like I’ve spent the last four years trying to make it. In a couple of months, it’ll be playable, and you can see what’s happened with it – particularly if you’re one of the folk who played the episodes, and has been waiting for Part 4 since March 2011.

Keep an eye on Steam, GOG and Wadjet Eye games, and I’ll see you in the future! (Hopefully not the oppressive dystopic one ruled by supercomputers)

James “Jim/Jamie/Jimmy/Jimbo/Thomas” Dearden

Technocrat Games