[Jordan] I always like to start with breaking in stories, and as far back as I’m able to see, you started at a company called Elixir Studios as a programmer before you moved onto Lionhead… Was that the first job you ever had making games, and if so, how did that come about for you?

[Cliff] Yes, Elixir was the first proper job I had as a programmer. I got that through an agency, although I’d read about Elixir and they were a company I really wanted to work for anyway. I had done a lot of indie games in my spare time already, so my CV was basically just a bunch of screenshots of games I’d made myself, which got me the job. They had a lot of very clever academics working for them, but not many people who had developed whole games, so they hired me as an all-rounder.

[Jordan] I know you’ve said that you developed an interest in coding and games at an early age, but you also mention on your blog that at one point you worked on the stock market, teaching guitar, and building boats apparently? What was going on in those in between years before you started professionally working on games? Were you working on making anything at that time?

[Cliff] It’s complex isn’t it? I went from university to boatbuilding + guitar teaching and playing in bands. Eventually I ended up working in IT, and ended up in the city doing trading support for stock market software. After that, I had a few other IT jobs while I developed games part time. I did Asteroid Miner, Rock racers, Starship Tycoon, Kombat Kars around that time.

[Jordan] You’re obviously an indie developer, but at one point you did work for what is now a pretty large, and well known company in Lionhead Studios – what was it like for you working there? Is there anything that you learned or took away from your time there?

[Cliff] It was good fun for a while, but the team got bigger and it became very corporate. Lionhead had an indie developer spirit for a while, but when the company grew it just became like any other big software developer where you are a tiny, irrelevant cog in a machine. I think that’s just inevitable for big companies. I learned a huge amount of technical stuff there. Elixir taught me how to actually code, but Lionhead taught me software engineering, which is more big-picture stuff. It also taught me just how inefficient large games companies can be, and I guess reinforced my belief that small indie game development was viable.