GAME CHANGER
Developers look back on the impact of their hit Lemmings on industry and city
The gaming geeks who built one of the world’s most addictive video games have revealed they wanted to make it more difficult but no one would have played it.
Thirty years after Lemmings was created by a group of schoolboys at a computer club in Dundee, its creators – now the biggest players in the gaming world – have told how they cut much out of the prototype.
“We had to make the levels easier,” said DMA Design boss Steve Hammo n d . “We played it constantly in the off ice. At one point it had 200 dif ferent levels. There were a lot of a r g ume nt s about what should stay in.”
But a puzzlesolving game where rows and rows of characters move across the screen had never been seen before. The developers gave the lovable characters eight skills to prevent them falling to their deaths.
Distributor Ian Hetherington said: “People just loved the little guys and had that emotional bond with them, which meant that solving the problem wasn’t an academic process. Solving the problem was saving the guys.”
A new documentary to celebrate 30 years of the game tells the story of how it was born and how it made Scot land the epicent re of a new industry.
When Lemmings was released in 1991, it was a huge hit for DMA Design. The company was based above the Deep Sea chip shop in Dundee’s Perth Road. The founders met at a computer club held in an old chemistry lab at the city’s Kingsway Technical College.
Most of the members were still at school. They carried their own computers – usual ly Sinclair Spectrums or Commodore 64s – and portable TVs to the classroom.
Mike Dailly, who went on to create Grand Theft Auto, recalls crossing town on two buses. Hammond walked two miles along a dual carriageway. Chris van der Kuyl was also a member of
Kingsway computer club and went on to be Scotland’s leading games developer. He put it down to the Timex factory in the city, where the Sinclair Spectrum was made.
He said: “Dundee becoming the Hollywood of the games industry is not an ending many would have scripted. The initial catalyst was this wide availability of cheap computers. The Spectrum was about being cheap so a lot didn’t pass quality standards.
“If you knew the right person, it was £5 or £10 to get a slightly broken Spectrum.” Even the most devoted fans admit Lemmings looked clunky, even by the standards of early 90s. But it was enough to get users hooked – thanks to the marketing masterstroke of selling a taster copy of the game for 50p. If users didn’t love it, they could get their money back. Hetherington said: “We must
have sold thousands th of these for 50p and not n a single person asked for a refund.”
On the day it was released, the guys gu from DMA went down to Boots Boo and John Menzies to watch people peo buying it. It sold more than 50,000 50,0 copies in the first 24 hours.
One On of Lemmings’ most famous fans was fantasy author Terry Pratchett. Prat Hammond is hugely proud that he became so addicted he deleteddel the game from his hard drive aand had to overwrite it so he could not get it back.
Gary Penn, from Dundee- based developdeveloper Denki, said: “It’s a game where youyo can enjoy being frustrated. You kill ssome to save the others. It’s one off ththe ffew games where it’s fun to lose.” In 2017 Lemmings was updated for the 21st century and can now be played on a mobile phone. There are 4000 levels and the once-primitive animated figures can choose from 1000 costumes. It has left such a huge legacy that there is even a statue of the characters in Dundee. DMA went on to create the first two versions of world-dominating Grand Theft Auto. These early GTAs were not as successful as Lemmings. Russell Kay, another of the original developers who runs YoYo Games in Dundee, said the world ’ s f irst computer games course, at Abertay University in Dundee, and the 400 firms employing 1300 programmers and artists making games in Scotland are Lemmings’ legacy. He said: “It’s gratifying to see so many diverse companies. It was the rocket fuel that propelled the games industry to where it is now.”