> What IF..._ - A Conversation with Robert Steggles (page 4)

Rob Steggles on the phone ...
chatting away with Mr Charpontier?

"[With Corruption] we were
hitting a different audience - 
it even got coverage in the
Financial Times."
- Rob Steggles

When it came down to the artists to draw the pictures for Corruption you didn’t use the usual suspects – why was that and how did you find the “right” artists for the job?
The artists – Alan (Hunnisett) and Richard (Selby) – were allocated to the job and were great at the ‘real world’ stuff. I wrote a brief for them (fairly amateurish) and then they got on with it. The results were stunning weren’t they? I loved the exploding BMW and the tramp in the park.

Oh yes, the BMW. You can't imagine how many times I consciously died in the game just to see that picture. Other favourites of mine are "By the Duck Pond" and "Private Room" (I really love the use of light and shadow in that one). Did you actually tell the artists which locations to illustrate or would they choose the locations themselves?
Can’t remember, sorry: I must have said some and they must have filled in others.

Who wrote the dialogue for the conversation that can be found on the tape that came with the game? Was the tape your idea?
I think the idea was mine- it was part of the plot from the beginning – and it was decided to make it part of the game’s protection by turning it into one of the feelies. That’s when Michael wrote the text.

Your timing with Corruption couldn’t have been any better – stock brokers and financial scandals were the talk of the town at that time. I also remember Oliver Stone’s Wall Street being roughly released around the same time. Like Guild, Corruption won numerous awards (deservedly so) – you must have been really proud …
I don’t think Corruption would be voted the best game that we did by any means but it was a conscious decision to do something different and Anita and Ken took a big risk with it so I guess we all felt pretty justified when we saw that the awards were still coming in and the sales figures didn’t look too bad either and we were hitting a different audience – it even got coverage in the Financial Times.

What do you remember about working on Fish!? Did you do any design work for that one?
I was thrown onto Fish! just to do a bit of tidying up and get the text in ‘house’ style. I have very fond memories of that team and had some great laughs with John and Phil and Richard and Bob and Pete.

How much of the scenario and the game was done before it was decided to release Fish! under the Magnetic Scrolls banner?
I think Anita and Ken always wanted to release it under the Magnetic Scrolls banner – it just needed to feel like a Magnetic Scrolls game. Nothing any of us could really articulate well enough to describe it but once the fishy puns started getting in everywhere it began to feel right. Paul Findlay came up with the strap line ‘One nibble and you’re hooked’ which was genius…

You mentioned in an article you wrote for Stefan Meier’s “Magnetic Scrolls Memorial” that, after finishing Corruption and Fish!, you were working on a title that wasn’t a straight text adventure at all – can you shed a bit of light on that project?
I was looking for more ‘grown up’ material and like the idea of recreating some great historical political intrigues so I was looking at doing something around the Caesar/Anthony/Cleopatra thing but … it wasn’t really working as a game, it was a bit too much of an observation. I/we should have done Guild 2 instead to pay the bills ;-)

Interesting. Can you elaborate a bit more?
It was the PC/NPC interaction, the politics, that was interesting me but characters are/were difficult. When you’re writing games like these you feel like a bit of a time traveler so any time/place with some sort of intrigue was tempting to pick on. I never settled on one and, as I say, found it difficult to make a game out of it in any event.