beyond anduin

DIGITAL HANDS: AN INTERVIEW WITH PHILIP MITCHELL

Fredrik Ekman: Ryds Allé 3:106, S-582 51 Linköping, Sweden ([email protected])

During the eighties, a series of games called The Tolkien Software Adventure Series was written by a team at Beam Software supervised by Philip Mitchell. The titles of the games in the series are The Hobbit, The Fellowship of the Ring Software Adventure (published in Europe under the title Lord of the Rings: Game One), Shadows of Mordor and Crack of Doom. They were published by Melbourne house in Europe and Addison-Wesley in North America.

The Hobbit in particular was in many ways revolutionary for its time and came to be one of the most important sources of inspiration for text adventures in Europe during the eighties, although today it tends to be mostly remembered for its many annoying bugs. Here follows an interview with Philip Mitchell.

Fredrik Ekman [FE]: How did Beam Software get the license to produce these games?

Philip Mitchell [PM]: Melbourne House negotiated the licenses for Tolkien's works in 1981. When the Melbourne House name was sold the rights were transferred to Beam Software (same company different name). This was about 1986 I think.

FE: What exactly was the relationship between Melbourne House and Beam Software?

PM: Beam was a subsidiary of Melbourne House. MH was the publishing company, Beam was the development studio. When MH was eventually sold so we could concentrate on development, Beam became an independent group. Funnily enough part of the group is now Laser Beam, a publishing company.

FE: Tolkien Enterprises (which is totally independent from The Tolkien Estate) owns the rights to role playing games, board games, card games—every imaginable kind of game based on Middle-earth except computer games. Could you explain to me why this is so?

PM: Computer game rights are a relatively new thing. When we negotiated the rights, computer games were seen as a very risky business and the traditional game producers (who had the rights to the board games, card games, etc.) were not interested in taking the risk. The Tolkien Estate were happy to sign up this chancy new area to someone who had a prototype product and knew what they were doing. I bet there are a lot of people today who wished they had taken a gamble back then on the computer games industry!

FE: Why was The Hobbit the choice for the first game, rather than The Lord of the Rings?

PM: I don't really remember why, although as it turned out it was by far the better choice. I think part of it was that it was a complete story in one book and more manageable than the entire Lord of the Rings story.

FE: In The Hobbit, both you and Veronika Megler are credited, but in most subsequent articles and reviews, only you are mentioned. What did each of you actually do in the development?

PM: Veronika and I started at Melbourne house at the same time (we where friends at uni and both responded to an advertisement for programmers). That was in 1981, and we worked part time while finishing our degrees. At the end of 1981 she left to work for IBM while I stayed on and completed the game.

FE: How come you and Veronika of all people were chosen to make the game?

PM: We were in the right place at the right time. Alfred Milgrom (company founder and director) wanted to make a better adventure game than was currently available. He advertised for programmers, we replied and got the job. The rest is history.

FE: The Hobbit was first written for the Spectrum,¹ then converted to a variety of different formats. With what versions were you personally involved?

PM: Actually it was first written for the Tandy TRS-80 but never released. The Spectrum appeared at an opportune moment for us—right processor (since all the code was written at that stage for the Z80), color, cheap etc. After the Spectrum I was involved to some degree with all of the other versions. I supervised all of the other versions and wrote and converted code on the Amstrad, Oric-1, PC, Apple II and Macintosh versions. In case you were interested there was also (briefly) an Amiga version that was never released. In fact the Macintosh version was written on an Amiga 1000.

FE: Two versions of the game were released for the Spectrum: 1.1 and 1.2. Was version 1.0 the TRS-80 version, or was there another, unreleased, ZX Spectrum version?

PM: Version 1.1 was the first released Spectrum version, 1.2 was a patched update with some bug fixes. There was never a version 1.0. At the time we felt that version 1.0 of anything was synonymous with unpolished pre-release software so we went straight to 1.1 to make it look better. Ah the vanity of youth.

FE: The parser² of The Hobbit was, I would say, nothing short of revolutionary for a Spectrum game of its time, and is probably one of the most important features that have since given the game its cult status. What made you decide to put so much effort into it, rather than just make a simple two-word parser which was common at the time?

PM: There were three basic aspects of adventure games at the time that we felt needed improving and that, if implemented properly, would give us a competitive edge. The first was the game database size, by comparison to its predecessors, The Hobbit was a very large adventure game, we developed some really neat text storage systems to cram as much into the game as we possibly could. The second thing was the parser (which as you said is what the game is most remembered for). Our aim was to bring a bit more life to the game by allowing the user to interact more freely with it. The third thing we set out to do was to create a sense that the world in the game contained autonomous, intelligent creatures that you could interact with. Admittedly, Gandalf and Thorin were pretty stupid; but compared to anything else around it was a major leap forward. I still think this is an area that needs more attention in today's games. Myst, 7^th Guest and Zork Nemesis (to name a few) are great games; but their worlds feel so empty. The graphics were an extra that only really got added when the Spectrum arrived, although we had tinkered with graphics on the TRS-80 version.

FE: Were there any parts of the games that you were particularly satisfied with?

PM: All up, The Hobbit is still the game that I have the fondest memories of working on. We were at the beginning of the personal computer era, on the brink of perhaps the greatest technological revolution to date, and it was pretty exciting. Things changed so fast. It was like a continuous roller coaster ride.

FE: Compared with The Hobbit, the other games in the series feel less successful and far more removed from Tolkien's original. Why do you think this is so?

PM: Actually, I agree with your comments. We never quite managed to continue the success we had with The Hobbit through the Lord of the Rings series. In hindsight, I think that Lord of the Rings was not as well suited to the style of game we were doing then as The Hobbit was—at least we had a great deal more trouble coming up with an adventure game based on the stories. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing the books—I love them all, but the adventure game just seemed to flow out of The Hobbit.

FE: How do you feel looking back at those games today?

PM: It's a bit like looking at high school photos. You shudder when you think of some of the things you did, but basically the memories are good and I am proud to have been a part of it.

FE: What other computer games and computer game authors influenced you when you wrote the games?

PM: At the time I was heavily into the original Crowther and Woods adventure game on the VAX system at Uni. I also played a game in the VAX called Dungeon, which was later to resurface as the Zork series of games. Scott Adams' adventures on the TRS-80 were also big favorites. I have always preferred puzzle and logic games to shoot-em-ups, probably because I'm not very good at arcade games.

FE: Did you ever play any role playing games (the traditional paper-and-dice variety)?

PM: A couple of times; but I never really got into it.

FE: Exactly how well did the games sell? I suspect that The Hobbit sold much better than the later games. Is this correct?

PM: I don't have any detailed regional sales figures; though I can tell you that, across all platforms, The Hobbit sold in excess of a million units world wide and the Lord of the Rings games did about half that combined. At the height of the Spectrum and C64 versions I was getting about 50-60 letters a day from fans and people who were stuck and needed help.

FE: Does Beam Software have plans for producing any more games based on the books in the future?

PM: At this stage nothing is planned.

FE: What are you working on right now?

PM: Mostly technical project management (i.e., organizing the programming team on multiple projects and sorting out the problems to keep things running). I still do a fair amount of programming, The Dame was Loaded (published by Philips) has just been released in the U.S. and should be out in Europe soon. I helped code the Macintosh port and am doing the CDi version. Full Court Press (published by Microsoft) will be out soon (received a top ten award at E3).

FE: Thank you very much for your time and your effort.

Internet references (with download versions for emulators):
http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/hobbit.html
http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/lotr-gameone.html
http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/som.html
http://www.lysator.liu.se/tolkien-games/entry/crackofdoom.html

Footnotes
1. Sinclair ZX Spectrum was one of the most popular home computers in Europe during the eighties. In the US, it was released under the name Timex Sinclair 2068, but never became popular.
2. The parser is the part of a text adventure which interprets the player's input. In a simple game this would only handle something like open door while a game like The Hobbit understands take the key and unlock the door with it.