MARK WEBLEY

The cofounder of Two Point Studios talks about his amazing career at Bullfrog and Lionhead, where he worked on classic titles like Theme Hospital, Black White, Fable and The Movies

-  Lewis Packwood

How did you get into games?

During my university industrial year, I spent 14 months programming business software and realised I needed to do something creative, so at the end of my degree I applied to loads of advertising agencies, and not one of them even rejected me, they just ignored my applications. So I ended up writing business software for a number of years. A friend who worked at EA showed me a poster of all the games that they did, and there was one that looked amazing, and it was Populous. Then probably only a month later, this lovely young lady called Jayne Molyneux joined the place I was working at (she's now my wife). She was chatting about her background, and she said, "Oh, my brother makes computer games, he did a game called Populous."

So how did you actually end up landing the job at Bullfrog?

My friend Alan Wright and I worked on a demo based on Space Hulk, with a turn-based squad in an isometric environment. We presented it to Bullfrog, and there were probably only six or eight people there at the time. They all looked at the demo and said, "Well, we're not going to do your game, but do you want to come and set up our conversions department?" So my first job was converting Populous II to the PC.

How did it compare to your previous job as a business software programmer?

It was brilliant. I mean, I didn't have to wear a suit. And bizarrely, everyone started at 10am rather than a sensible working time. I'd had experience of working at two or three companies before I came into the games industry, and I think that set me up for realising how amazing it was to work in a space like this.

And really, if you’re going to start anywhere, starting at Bullfrog is pretty amazing.

Can you tell us what happened to the squadbased game demo?