COLLECTED WORKS - JOSH SAWYER
Edge UK|Christmas 2024
Journeying to the Forgotten Realms, Infinity and beyond with the RPG veteran
ANDREI PECHALIN
COLLECTED WORKS - JOSH SAWYER

Like many developers of his generation, Josh Sawyer stumbled into a career in videogames. “I went to school originally for vocal performance in a conservatory of music,” he tells us. “I switched over pretty quickly to history – that’s what I got my degree in. I wasn’t a good student, but I had taught myself web design and learned Flash animation to design a tattooing website. A friend of mine told me there was a job for a webmaster at Interplay. I didn’t know what I was going to do career-wise, so I applied for the job. There were only three applicants out of 62 that had [Flash experience], and they really wanted Flash, so I got hired.”

Sawyer had grown up playing Dungeons & Dragons, and started making his own tabletop RPGs in high school and college. He also remembers playing their computer counterparts: “When I was ten or so, maybe a little later, I saw The Bard’s Tale on a Commodore 64. I had only ever seen games on an Apple IIe – the audio was not very good, and it was black and white – so Commodore 64 was like I was seeing D&D. I played all the Gold Box games from Strategic Simulations Inc, and I really got into cRPGs.”

Ending up at the company responsible for The Bard’s Tale, that formative game, and getting to make cRPGs with the D&D licence, then, seemed nothing short of providence – even if Sawyer’s initial role was only tangentially related to actually making games. “My first job was to design the website for Planescape: Torment,” he explains, confessing that “I didn’t really have any conception of how videogames were made. But I was working pretty closely with the dev team, and immediately I was like, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do’.”

Denne historien er fra Christmas 2024-utgaven av Edge UK.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

Denne historien er fra Christmas 2024-utgaven av Edge UK.

Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.

FLERE HISTORIER FRA EDGE UKSe alt
BONAPARTE: A MECHANIZED REVOLUTION
Edge UK

BONAPARTE: A MECHANIZED REVOLUTION

No sooner have we stepped into the boots of royal guard Bonaparte than we’re faced with a life-altering decision.

time-read
2 mins  |
January 2025
TOWERS OF AGHASBA
Edge UK

TOWERS OF AGHASBA

Watch Towers Of Aghasba in action and it feels vast. Given your activities range from deepwater dives to climbing up cliffs or lumbering beasts, and from nurturing plants or building settlements to pinging arrows at the undead, it’s hard to get a bead on the game’s limits.

time-read
2 mins  |
January 2025
THE STONE OF MADNESS
Edge UK

THE STONE OF MADNESS

The makers of Blasphemous return to religion and insanity

time-read
3 mins  |
January 2025
Vampire Survivors
Edge UK

Vampire Survivors

As Vampire Survivors expanded through early access and then its two first DLCs, it gained arenas, characters and weapons, but the formula remained unchanged.

time-read
2 mins  |
January 2025
Devil May Cry
Edge UK

Devil May Cry

The Resident Evil 4 that never was, and the Soulslike precursor we never saw coming

time-read
6 mins  |
January 2025
Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Edge UK

Dragon Age: The Veilguard

With Dragon Age: The Veilguard, BioWare has made a deeply self-conscious game, visibly inspired by some of the best-loved ideas from Dragon Age and Mass Effect.

time-read
6 mins  |
January 2025
SKATE STORY
Edge UK

SKATE STORY

Hades is a halfpipe

time-read
5 mins  |
January 2025
SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION VII
Edge UK

SID MEIER'S CIVILIZATION VII

Firaxis rethinks who makes history, and how it unfolds

time-read
5 mins  |
January 2025
FINAL FANTASY VII: REBIRTH
Edge UK

FINAL FANTASY VII: REBIRTH

Remaking an iconic game was daunting enough then the developers faced the difficult second entry

time-read
9 mins  |
January 2025
THUNDER LOTUS
Edge UK

THUNDER LOTUS

How Spirit farer's developer tripled in size without tearing itself apart

time-read
7 mins  |
January 2025