Jake Simpson (00:00)
How you doing? you know, same shit, different day. So let's talk a little bit about who you are, what you do and how I know you, 'cause there are some great stories. How long have we known each other now?

Les Ellis (00:00)
I'm good, man. How are you?

It's gonna be about twenty five, twenty seven years, something crazy like that.

Jake Simpson (00:19)
Yeah, it's something like that. It's early nineties, wasn't it? 'Cause yeah. I was working at Midway. So to tell the story, to give a little bit of background, Les is an ex journo. you used to work on Gamesmaster, right? The magazine, yeah.

Les Ellis (00:33)
Yep, Games Master was one of the ones I worked on, C V G, Sega Pro, a whole bunch of stuff. But Gamesmaster was the longest one I was.

Jake Simpson (00:39)
Right, you wanna did some stuff on a PC thing as didn't

And and did you did

you not at the time have a bit of a reputation, shall we say, or an image that you were maintaining?

Les Ellis (01:00)
gonna say if it was reputation I'd ask which one the image. That kind of developed itself. I didn't really try for it on purpose, but everyone else did and they kept sustaining it and I just didn't stop it. So yeah. There was a bit of a a dark, evil, demonic image going on yet.

Jake Simpson (01:18)
Which hasn't really changed, has it? I mean you did at one point I reckon in your house in it was outside of Braath Bath, wasn't it, in Troybridge, I it was, where you were living. you had a room painted completely black.

Les Ellis (01:20)
it's all completely.

yeah, that was a mistake, but yes, I did.

Jake Simpson (01:35)
And

and and what was in that room?

Les Ellis (01:37)
Yes. That was where my guitar lived.

Jake Simpson (01:40)
And

Les Ellis (01:43)
And my amplifiers You're gonna make me say it, aren't you?

Jake Simpson (01:45)
And

Les Ellis (01:52)
Interesting. There was a big box in the room.

Jake Simpson (01:55)
Big box. W what what what do you do what do you use that box for?

Les Ellis (02:03)
Relaxing and yeah.

Jake Simpson (02:04)
What

you normally use that box for, Les? That's what I thought. So let's let's reiterate, Les had a coffee, a black room with a coffee in it. And y and you were saying that, you know, the image sort of ran away with itself. I wonder why.

Les Ellis (02:08)
You mean the coffin? That's the one, yeah, yeah. So

Yeah. Thinking back, probably not the best idea, but hey.

Jake Simpson (02:25)
I don't know, it might been, because certainly it certainly worked. Everyone knew you were. Yes. Yeah, that's very true. All right, so at this point that twenty-five years ago, I was working in Midway and we were working on, you know, NBA Jam and WrestleMania and a whole bunch of other games at the time. And every time I would go back to England, the other guys like Ed Boone and Mark Tremel would always corner me and say, Hey, bring back some British gaming Macs because they're so much better than the ones we have in America. The ones we have in England.

From Jazz Rignall and all the rest of it were had such a sense of humor, such an incredible sense of humour. And so I would, on the last day of being in England, I go to the to WH Smith's and just gather up an armful of like ten of these things and whatever was there and bring them back with me. And then I'd sit and read them on the plane. And then I'd hand them around to all of the the developers at Midway and they'd all have a good laugh. And I remember you you were viewing some Star Trek game. I don't even remember what it was, but I remember you

Les Ellis (03:20)
Viewing it. Is

it Elite, Star Trek Elite something?

Jake Simpson (03:24)
I honestly no, no, it wasn't Elite Force. No, this is way before that would have been Raven, dude. And I wasn't there yet. No, this is way earlier than that. And I remember you having a rant about people learning Klingon and what a waste of time it was because you're never actually going to meet a Klingon to to use it on. And how do you know if you're actually pronouncing anything right? Because there is no right because it's not real language. You know, it's quite a rant. fully a quarter of this game review was you ranting about people learning Klingon. It was quite amusing at the time. Anyway.

I I was actually asked, you know, I was I was talking with the other guys and and they all sort of said, Hey, has anybody ever really talked to any of these guys in England? And I well I thought, well, I'll I'll try that. So I actually gave about I think it was about six different journalists, all the best ones I'd read in all the magazines. I called all of them and left messages because it was silly o'clock in the morning. And the only person who got back to me and said, that's nice to hear that you guys are, you know, enjoying my stuff was Les. It was you, wasn't it? And what happened then?

Les Ellis (04:21)
God, which story do you want?

Jake Simpson (04:22)
The

the the MK three exclusive.

Les Ellis (04:25)
yeah, okay. So we as a magazine we really loved the Mortal Kombat series. MK Two had been out for a while there. We've done some really nice coverage on it. And we kind of really cheekily suggested to Jake that hey, if you get us some something really juicy on MK three, we'll send over a shitload of chocolate, which seemed to be the currency at the time. So Jake hooked us up with Ed Boone. this was

Jake Simpson (04:49)
Chocolate.

Les Ellis (04:53)
free internet days. So it's like to talk to people in the States, you had to stay in the office really late to do it. And kind of many late night conversations turned into we were running seemingly endless Mortal Kombat free covers and features, doing regular stuff with Ed, John Tebias, and some of the others, which were driving the their British publisher who was looking after their games in Europe, probably in America as well.

The claim at the time were being driven nuts because we were getting all of this content and they had no idea what it was, where it was coming from, how we were getting it, how we were giving them the information on when their stuff was being released and what the content was. And we kind of had this long running war with the publisher, who was so pissed at us for having all this stuff. It was amazing.

Jake Simpson (05:45)
I didn't know that that was happening.

Les Ellis (05:47)
gee yeah, they were really sore at us for that.

Jake Simpson (05:50)
You had a you had a a a dev diary from li from Boone at one point, didn't you?

Les Ellis (05:55)
Yeah, the combat column, yeah. Yeah.

Jake Simpson (05:58)
And I'm presuming that you you know, that must have done a lot for your your circulation.

Les Ellis (06:03)
yeah. We became pretty much known in the UK as the place to go for anything to do with Mortal Kombat. Again, pre internet. So, you know, everyone was waiting for that monthly update. And he'd be sending us like concept sketches of the characters, giving us details of all the new moves, the fatalities, the Babalities at the time and all the other stuff they were doing. Yeah, it was yeah, our circular our circulation rather went nuts for a while. It was good.

Jake Simpson (06:30)
And we met when you came to when when MK three was launched at the AMA show, A A A show, I think it was what's called American arcade distributors or something. I don't remember what it is, but it was in Reno, right? Wasn't it? Reno Novara?

Les Ellis (06:47)
Yep. Yep.

Jake Simpson (06:49)
That's right. And we met and and hung out for a few days with some very late nights. I remember, you know, eating steak at two o'clock in the morning or something and hanging out with my my sister's husband at the time as well, who was over at Reno skiing at the same time. Yeah, it was it was quite an entertaining entertaining time. And since then we've remained friends and I don't quite know how, but we have. And we share a a love of Doctor Who, which I think is a really, you know, good thing 'cause

All the best people do, obviously. Yeah.

Les Ellis (07:21)
Despite all their efforts of trashing that with the last series, we're still there.

Jake Simpson (07:25)
Mm there were some i issues with the last series, but there were some good bits too. I th you know what? We could spend an hour just talking about that. I'm not going down that half because it's very easy to get sidetracked. In fact you have just done a Doctor Who game, have you not?

Les Ellis (07:38)
Yep, it's kind of rare to get an opportunity to work on something that you really love. It's also a really good way of spoiling something you really love. Yeah, it was it was a good experience to work on.

Jake Simpson (07:50)
And what's what was the game and it was a remake of a VR game, right?

Les Ellis (07:54)
Yeah, there was a VR game, Doctor Who, the Edge of Time. so we did Doctor Who Edge of Reality, which was un VRing the VR game and adding a whole bunch of new content to it, new levels, new creatures and all that kind of stuff.

Jake Simpson (08:08)
Hm. Did the bit that I I gave you ever get into it, you know, with the the quotes up the stairs.

Les Ellis (08:13)
Possibly stuff you give me to put in games would never make it through past the census, so no.

Jake Simpson (08:20)
Nobody loves me. You know, I must actually sit around and get around to finishing that game. I did start it and I need to finish it. Anyway, but that's jumping ahead a bit, all right. So if we talk a little bit about your career. So you went as a journo and then, after being a journalist for quite some time, you decided in your infinite wisdom that it was better to make games than to talk about them, isn't that right?

Les Ellis (08:40)
Yeah, there was a series of from what I remember, some quite late night phone calls between you and I where I was I'd just kind of had enough, bought out in my brain, wanted to do something different, and you were just like, sorry, you should be a producer then and it's like, Well, what the hell is that kind of thing?

Jake Simpson (08:58)
But you

were already useless, so you know, it wasn't gonna change anything.

Les Ellis (09:04)
So yeah, you were telling me lots about that, what they did, what they didn't do, what they did badly, what they did well. And then the opportunity came up when I left C V G to go and work for a studio just outside London, doing some Game Boy Advance and other bits and pieces. So that it was that long ago. And yeah, it kind of took off from there.

Jake Simpson (09:26)
been around in this industry way too long, haven't we? I mean, you know

Les Ellis (09:29)
There's a few people that say we have, yeah, but I don't think so.

Jake Simpson (09:33)
Yeah. Yes, usually each other. So yeah, I remember the Game Boy Ads stuff. I remember talking to you about tools and stuff like that at the time. Gosh, that was a long time ago, wasn't it? So we should point out that Les works with Rihanna Pratchett, who's obviously Terry Pratchett's daughter, but also she's an established game writer in her own right. And she's written a whole ton of games that we we both worked on sorry, we both played and enjoyed. And she's she was also a journo I think she was on PC Gamer wasn't.

Les Ellis (09:41)
yeah.

She? She was on PC zone when I was on C V G so we were in the same basement.

Jake Simpson (10:04)
That's right. And and we're she's a friend to both of us and and she's not one to hold back in terms of her descriptions. Yeah, right. God knows what she thinks of me. Anyway, so right now you're you're keeping the lights on over at Jaw, the the Just Add Water group in in basic Alice, right? You're a producer there, but recently you've been w also working on with Brenda and John Romero, is that right?

Les Ellis (10:24)
Yeah.

Yeah, they're really good friends with the guy who owns Just Add Water Jaw. And basically their producer was resigning from a project and they needed someone to get them through the console certification process. So Stu kind of said, because we were just winding down a project, he sort of asked me if I wanted to go and work for them just to like sit in and get them through the submission stuff. So yeah, we originally said that was going to be for about eight weeks, I think it was, eight, ten weeks. And

kind of stuck around for about a year, year and a half, 'cause it just worked. We just clicked. We got on really well. So yeah, we were carrying on doing all the DLCs for EmpireSyn.

Jake Simpson (11:10)
Hmm. Well I've I've spoken to Brenda about you and there's been some interesting conversations. I'm not gonna repeat them here because you know I like just dropping things like that and making you worry.

Les Ellis (11:20)
I I she would have said yeah, she said.

Jake Simpson (11:24)
Here's another one who doesn't hold back.

Les Ellis (11:28)
When she goes New York on you, you know it, yeah.

Jake Simpson (11:32)
From New York though, is she? I thought she's in Maryland or something, isn't she?

Les Ellis (11:36)
I'm pretty sure she's New York. I see.

Jake Simpson (11:38)
Okay. Well, I don't know, I'll have to ask her. So, all right, you're a producer. Yeah. for the uninitiated, what does that actually mean? What do you do, Les?

Les Ellis (11:48)
We're the unsung heroes of game dead.

Jake Simpson (11:50)
Well

that's where you are, is it the unsung heroes? You are the ringmaster. Yeah.

Les Ellis (11:56)
Too long, can't be asked to read version. We are responsible for making the schedules and making sure that a game's development sticks to the schedule and the budget and solving all the problems along the way and being a psychologist, a best friend, a big brother, and general advisor to everyone on the team.

Jake Simpson (12:15)
Go on, give us more detail because that's just a bit wishy-washy.

Les Ellis (12:20)
I'll use your analogy then. With the big shit umbrella, all the shit falls on the producer and they just cover the development team so it it misses them and they only get splashed by what they need to get splashed by.

Jake Simpson (12:31)
That's a really nice way of putting it. I'm sure there's a lot of, you know, wannabe game developers listening in, they're thinking, God, shit umbrella, excellent. Yeah. I want to be like Les. I wanna be a shit umbrella. I mean, you know, you could also say that shit umbrella could mean that it's an umbrella that doesn't work very well.

Les Ellis (12:49)
Yeah.

Jake Simpson (12:51)
I mean, you know, equally just saying

Les Ellis (12:54)
It could be, yeah. I mean, producers do lots of different things at different companies on different projects. I don't think any two roles are exactly the same when you do it. It's just you're involved with everything. You're involved with a lot of the communication stuff with clients and making sure that clients aren't talking to people they shouldn't be talking to. And you're just making sure that everything stays on track and everyone stays sane and doesn't go postal.

Jake Simpson (13:23)
good luck with that.

Les Ellis (13:24)
Yeah. That's the hardest.

Jake Simpson (13:26)
Now, going back to to the Reno thing, there was a there was a story that happened in Reno.

Les Ellis (13:34)
yeah,

Jake Simpson (13:37)
Just that I drew up that one.

Les Ellis (13:39)
Yeah, thanks for that. Yeah, you're welcome. So are you gonna do this or am I? No. All right. So we were frequenting one of Reno's finest establishments, trying to think whether it was the really dodgy bar or just the bad bar we went to. It would have been just the bad bar, I'm sure. And it got to kicking out time and I don't think anyone was in a particularly good well, everyone was absolutely hammered. So got out from this bar, everyone was getting taxis back to various hotels.

Jake Simpson (13:43)
You are.

Les Ellis (14:08)
Then I got back to my hotel and as most people did back then, just collapsed into a coma on the bed. That's it.

Jake Simpson (14:16)
No, there's a there's a little more to that story, isn't there, Les? You do you do it around it. Do I have to really prod it? Come on, you know you

Les Ellis (14:26)
I mean I did when I went to breakfast the next morning, very late morning, there was a hotel manager talking to me about how they'd had an awful lot of messages and visits during the night.

Jake Simpson (14:40)
what not what I was thinking. It was more about the the taxi driver. Mm-hmm. The young lady. Or the actually she wasn't that young, was she?

Les Ellis (14:48)
thanks for that. The one chance I had of looking a little bit cool in this story.

Jake Simpson (14:53)
Well, she was an older lady. And she was a taxi driver and did she not take a fancy to you?

Les Ellis (14:58)
Yes. And she was the one responsible for most of the messages and visits during the night, trying to find out what room I was in and to get a number and all that kind of stuff. Me completely unconscious in my room anyway, so oblivious to all this going on. But yeah, Reno taxi drivers. I just thought that was funny.

Jake Simpson (15:17)
What are you telling me the next day and I just could not stop laughing? dear. Some people a no taste. Anyway, so when you're working as a journo though, there must have been some good stories about I don't know, goings on shenanigans.

Les Ellis (15:34)
man, this was the nineties. It was this was the year at Tabia Giorno. The stuff that was going on was just insane. There are some absolute legendary stories which will never be revealed because they involve people who are in very good positions in companies like Apple and EA and Microsoft and Sony. But yeah, there were some

Jake Simpson (15:54)
You could always tell a story without say naming names.

Les Ellis (15:58)
but they'll know and they'll kill me. the events that were held back then were a lot wilder than the events that are held now. There was a lot a lot more freedom for things to go on. And when we were doing trips to go and see developers abroad, that was basically a key for a wild week or two. I mean you'd end up spending maybe a day two at the most with a developer and the rest of the time just out of control.

Jake Simpson (16:27)
I mean, there was a story at one point, I don't know whether there's you saying this, but there was a story about there being a cabinet full of nose candy that was used used to get exclusives and stuff like that. Is that true?

Les Ellis (16:40)
There was quite often incentives for front covers, big review scores, trips abroad, all that kind of stuff. Some companies were

Jake Simpson (16:49)
A little more upfront about it.

Les Ellis (16:51)
Yeah, they didn't really worry about how they got their coverage. They just wanted to make sure they got it. So there were some people who would agree and go down that road. Not me, of course, I was always too honest.

Jake Simpson (17:02)
You're such a choir boy.

Les Ellis (17:04)
But yeah, there was lots of stuff like that going on.

Jake Simpson (17:07)
You'd

explode if you ever walked into a church, wouldn't you?

Les Ellis (17:10)
absolutely, yeah. I mean there's lots of cool stuff. People getting taken to the Lucas Ranch to review a game that had barely even been started, let alone finished, but still managed to give it, you know, ninety percent in the front cover. I can't imagine what they got up to. But yeah, there was the incentives to work closely with these people were quite substantial.

Jake Simpson (17:37)
You know, the last time I was at the ranch, they've got a policy where you can't take pictures in there anymore. And there's a there's they have a library, they're the what was it called? The resource centre or something, it's what they call it. And it's basically designed f to to for stuff to be referenced. it's reference materials, that's right, the reference centre. And it's basically a really, really beautiful library with a you know, stuffed chairs and the the the circular staircase out of the middle. It's beautiful. And half of the walls are also covered with memorabilia, Star Wars and you know, all Star for Lucasfilm.

Indiana Jones stuff and all that kind of stuff. And you know, I was there and I thought, great, let's take some pictures and whipped out my phone to take some pictures and instantly security materializes and asked you to s desist and stop. So don't take pictures, don't take pictures. It is really weird because I mean there's security everywhere in that place, but yeah. Anyway Yeah. It's a good place to be though. It's very interesting. Did you know they have a whole sound mixing division in there? It's really amazing.

Les Ellis (18:34)
I would love to explore that place and have a look around you.

Jake Simpson (18:37)
Yeah. I was lucky a friend of mine who works for I ILM took me out there a little while ago, somebody X Raven and it was really quite nice.

Les Ellis (18:45)
But yeah, there was that was one of the the guys who took took up the offer from I think it was it was to do with the Phantom Menace. Yeah, it was when they Star Wars episode one came out. It was might have been that one, yeah. This is a long time ago. But yeah, it was something to do with that. Some magazine went over there, they did like a whole range of front covers, did this amazing ten page review. Game was nowhere near finished, completely unreviewable.

Jake Simpson (18:58)
Pod racing?

Les Ellis (19:12)
But by that time they were committed and a lot of money had been spent on it, so it had to happen.

Jake Simpson (19:17)
Did ever get like real feedback, real negative feedback from from developers if you gave it a negative score?

Les Ellis (19:25)
Yeah. Yeah, there was you know, a few times I was told not to go to an event because if I went they'd break my legs. Yeah, yeah. You got quite used to that.

Jake Simpson (19:35)
Not naming names then.

Les Ellis (19:37)
the come I think that was Game Tech might have been that. Very old company from way back. But yeah, you know, there are a few times that people took it personally. I mean I still now there have been times when I've, you know, gone to a studio to work for them and you'll get into a project and all of a sudden someone will come and tap you on the shoulder and go, You fucking reviewed my game, Mr. It's like, shit.

Jake Simpson (20:00)
So your past follows you around.

Les Ellis (20:02)
Yeah.

It does have a habit of doing that. Yeah. I mean, there were times when you didn't look forward to going to events 'cause you knew someone was going to kick off and say something and there would be an argument, but you get used to it.

Jake Simpson (20:13)
What was there anybody who was particularly effusive with you because you've given them a good score?

Les Ellis (20:17)
What exactly do you mean by that?

yeah, I'm sure they would have been. Yeah.

Jake Simpson (20:28)
There would have been? So you don't remember.

Les Ellis (20:30)
Well, you know, if they were doing it right, there's no way I could remember. So yeah.

Jake Simpson (20:37)
I I went to Amsterdam, I remember getting on the plane, I remember getting off the plane again at the other end, but you know, at this end and that's it, you know, there's this big gap in the middle.

Les Ellis (20:45)
I remember going to a lot of events and I remember coming home, but yeah, there are days in the middle where that really I mean, you're usually really busy at these things anyway. Especially working on multi format magazines 'cause I'd have loads of developers to go and visit, loads of publishers to go and visit.

Jake Simpson (21:01)
Did

you record the interviews and stuff like that? Did you record it all and then transcribe it or what? I mean, how did you do it?

Les Ellis (21:06)
just take dictaphones around and tape everything. and then, you know, just transcribe it all whenever you got home and sobered up.

Jake Simpson (21:13)
How did you get into that?

Les Ellis (21:16)
Into journalism.

Jake Simpson (21:18)
Game journalism in specifics.

Les Ellis (21:20)
It was a real fluke. I was living in Trowbridge at the time. I was actually playing in a band at the time and obviously doing it really badly 'cause n no one was making any money out of it. But

Jake Simpson (21:31)
I just need to interrupt you right there because I do believe I've actually got some of those tracks, have I not?

Les Ellis (21:38)
no, not that bad, no. That was like much, much later when we were good. Okay. This stuff you god, it was like a cat being brutalized. and a friend who I was working with at the time basically came to me and said, I've seen this really weird job advert in the local newspaper and it was for, you know, someone to play games for a living. And it's like, screw it, I could do that. That sounds easy. So I went along to this company called the Wordsworks at the times and they evolved into Paragon Publishing.

And they were like based in this little old mill building above a garage, just a really run down part of town. But their office looked amazing inside because they had all the consoles everywhere back in days of like Mega Drive, Master System, NES and stuff, and PC engine as well. And I was looking at these things thinking, Wow, this looks freaking awesome. And was just talking games with the guy who ran the place, a guy called Richard Montero, and kind of wrote a review of some Cygnosis puzzle game.

Atomics it was. And like a couple of days later the guy was like, Yeah, right, come and do this for a living. So we basically moved into the office because we rarely left it. Why would you spend it by games all the time?

Jake Simpson (22:49)
Games Master magazine, you initially st was that what you started on?

Les Ellis (22:53)
The the first one I started on was a magazine called Raise that ran for twelve issues, ran for a year. We were a contract publisher for Newsfield who did zap and crash and all that stuff.

Jake Simpson (23:05)
That Chad Spickner, right?

Les Ellis (23:06)
Yeah. And then from there we evolved the company into Paragon Publishing. We walked away from the contract with Newsfield and started publishing Sega Pro, which was the first unofficial Sega magazine in the UK. at the time there was only Sega Power or S as it was at the time for future publishing. So we went up against them. Sega hated us because we were unofficial and didn't stick to their things of you can only cover this game at this time. We wanted to do what we wanted to do.

So we used a lot of grey import titles. we got release schedules from Sega, so we could pretty much do what we wanted. And I was with them for another year before I moved over to future publishing.

Jake Simpson (23:48)
Now Games Master as well was a T V show at the same time, right? Yep. But there wasn't really any interaction between the two, between the magazine and the show, right?

Les Ellis (23:51)
Yeah.

Some of the people from the magazine went and had screen tests on the show to do their little review oblbs. A couple of the people I think actually went on it to do the mini reviews. There was interaction in terms of the magazine had to look like the show and have the same kind of tone, which was pretty anarchic at the time. That kind of lessened as the magazine went on and the show went off the air for a bit and then came back. So there wasn't a massive amount of interaction, certainly in the content of the magazine, other than

You know, we'd have interviews with Dominic Diamond and we'd do some stuff with the celebrities that they used. But the magazine was it had its own voice and could do what it wanted to do.

Jake Simpson (24:34)
I mean, the thing that I always was amazed at in in the UK in particular was the personalities of the people actually working on on the the game the magazines themselves. The their personalities would shine through. You know, it would be the review by Les and it would have a picture of you and you know, and you'd have it would have a like a a sta a standee figure of you with a with a speech bubble coming out of it or something like that. Different pictures of you with different expressions on your face. You know, that kind of thing. There was a huge degree of personality to these magazines, which there just wasn't.

In America, it they you know, their typical corporate style where they don't wanna actually promote anyone because if they promote someone then, you know, that all of a sudden that person gains power, so they don't want that. But UK went leaned into it, which I thought was really interesting.

Les Ellis (25:16)
So a lot of the magazines had some really, really talented writers as well. I mean, I'm not gonna include myself with those guys, but these have gone on now to become there's a few really good selling authors who were mag magazine writers at the time. Danny Wallace, for example, has gone on to do lots of T V and movie work as well as books. Andy Lowe has written books, Tim Weaver has written books. So there were some really serious, serious writers on

Jake Simpson (25:40)
So why haven't you written a book?

Les Ellis (25:41)
'Cause I'm producing games. Yeah. I'm far too busy to write a book. When I write my book of everything that happened to me in the industry, it will have to be just after I finish 'cause I'm never working again out.

Jake Simpson (25:44)
that's what

more to the point where we have to wait until everyone else is dead. I mean that's what I've looked at. People said to Why don't you write your memoirs? And I actually have I've actually written down a you know, a a document of all the stories that I remember. And I read it and thought, I can't ever release this because there are people who will sue me. Even though it's all true, it's still do you know what I mean? There's some stories in there that, yeah, people having sex on on the desk with the PR girl, well, you know, and and answering the door like that. I mean, all sorts of weird stuff going on, but

Yeah, I can't ever release that. And it's just there's just too much stuff that people would be very upset about.

Les Ellis (26:28)
Yeah, the inappropriate PR and marketing stuff, you know, that would be volumes of books on its own. So

Jake Simpson (26:35)
Also,

I mean, you know, you say it's a different time. The trouble is if you try telling those stories now i in a more Me Too woke environment, you know, it begins you begin to look at them in different eyes and you begin to think, God, you know, that really wasn't a very the right thing to do. That really wasn't a good thing to do. No, it was fun at the time. You know, now I look back on it, it's like, well that you know, you look at your own behaviour and think, Jesus, that really wasn't it's not in the light of day, it really isn't a good thing.

Les Ellis (27:04)
I mean, hopefully I never get cancelled, but it was of its time and it could never happen again and should never happen again.

Jake Simpson (27:13)
So development, I mean, you know, what other games have you worked on? 'Cause you've worked on quite a bit now. I mean, you've been a producer for what, fifteen years now?

Les Ellis (27:20)
god, more like twenty man. Yeah, I mean, so many games, so many platforms. I mean, starting out on GBA, it's gone through pretty much every console since then. So, you know, PS one, PS2, three, four, five, even, all the Xboxes, PCs, all the Nintendo stuff you name it. so many titles to work on, yeah. Well my very first one was working on a Lord of the Rings game on GBA, which was like, that's a hell of a way to be dropped into it. That was a real single swim job.

What else I worked on? Doctor Who, obviously we've mentioned there was a s really, really bad Star Wars game I worked on on GBA. God, there's so many. It's really hard to list them out. Empire of Sin, Sniper Elite VR, which has been out for a few months now and is actually winning some nice awards for that. So it's yeah, it's always good to have that. God, there's the JCB on Mars game. That was fun. There was a

Jake Simpson (28:07)
Mm-hmm.

Hold on, hold on, hold on. Back up a little bit. JCB on Mars. So for so we should explain for Americans, that JCB is effectively Big Yellow, the Caterpillar Tractors. It's the European version of Caterpillar. It's not the same company, it's a different company. But Europe has its own version of Caterpillar and it's called JCB. And so they create earth-moving equipment and farming equipment, that kind of stuff, right? So explain the context of this game.

Les Ellis (28:43)
So we we were working on an idea of a Mars pioneer survival game. And it's very much, you know, okay, so you're looking at art styles, you're looking at what would the buildings look like, what would the vehicles look like if you were going to Mars to do this stuff. And at that point, a relationship formed with JCB by one of the companies involved in making the game. And they basically said, Well, what if JCB made vehicles to go to Mars? Which basically meant we got to

Come up with some incredible, weird, wacky, wonderful ideas for what vehicles would look like, send them off to JB, JCB, and their vehicles designers would come back to us and go, you know what, we probably wouldn't do that. You know, we'd do this, we'd have the wheels doing this, we'd have this, this shape, we'd have the cab looking like this. So we got to work with the designers of JCB on these vehicles and then got invited down to their factory. my God, you have to go to this place.

It's the ultimate boys' toys place. Yeah. Sort of scratch, go to the J C V factory. It's amazing. And we've got to wander around that place and see them building these things and looking at how they designed them and everything they did and kind of the rules they had at J C V to what their vehicles have to be like. Yeah, they're all very, very Butch and Macho type of rules that they have to be. exactly that, yeah, they have to be manned vehicles, big wheels, big steering wheels.

Jake Simpson (30:02)
Muscular and

Les Ellis (30:09)
So yeah, we were working on that. That released, it went down really well. She got shown off at a couple of events like EGX and Eurogamer and stuff. So there was that. That was really cool. There was also we did a the same company, we did a zombie mariachi game. Don't know if they ever finished that because I left while that was still going on. But that was the weirdest idea for a game, but it worked really well. So it's like Yeah, you're a mariachi band and you were walking through this town.

killing zombies with the music that you were playing. It was it was messed up, but it was awesome. So much fun.

Jake Simpson (30:44)
Like Revolution X guard the arguments we had at the in the office, or at least I'd say the arguments, but the the the lead guy just could not make up his mind with between the tagline music is a weapon or music as the weapon and it went backwards and forwards for weeks and I kept saying, like, does anybody care? But he did. He cared.

Les Ellis (31:02)
It's got aerosmith in it.

Jake Simpson (31:04)
Well that's true, yeah. Yeah. That was a fun experience. That was a fun experience. I remember we sent them video once of the game and we had some music playing. There w there was a club scene in this where you you you go for a club and you have to shoot a whole bunch of the the the villain enforcers. And there's music playing in the background of the of the club. And the the message we got back from Aerosmith was it's all good except for the music in this club.

Aerosmith would never play a club that had that kind of music playing in the background. So so we had to change it all and completely re redo the music in it because it was because they like, Yeah, we would never play a club like that which did make me laugh.

Les Ellis (31:43)
No, they'd play anywhere, yeah.

Jake Simpson (31:45)
Yeah. so what else?

Les Ellis (31:49)
okay, so looking back, there was so after doing the GBA stuff at a company called Pocket Studios, I left and moved to a company that was doing production for MMOs. And we were working with a French company called Neveraxon again called the Saga of Rhizom. Short lived MMO. It was as pretty as hell, but virtually unplayable as a lot of

Jake Simpson (32:13)
Remember. I remember the calls. I remember us talking and you were like, yeah, I have to go offline, something's happening on Verizon or whatever. I have to go and I have to go and sort out the server or something. I remember that.

Les Ellis (32:22)
Yeah, there was an awful lot of late night, early morning, the servers crash, can you go and reboot it type calls. So that was cool. And we also did a lot of work with Turbine on Asheron's call. And at the time they were developing Lord of the Rings online and Dungeons and Dragons online. So there was a lot of involvement in that as well. That was kind of cool. But then the offer came in from a company in Manchester, where I now live, to work on

They came to me and said, We've got a Doctor Who game, do you wanna come and work on it? So that decision took about two seconds to make.

Jake Simpson (32:54)
Yeah, I just want you to know what not a bastard you are for that, 'cause you know, well I remember you telling me and me going

Les Ellis (33:03)
Yeah.

Jake Simpson (33:04)
Yeah, you mother and then thinking, well, if I don't get to work on it, you know, who would I want to work on it? And I thought, yeah, well, it has to be you, didn't it? I mean We should we should point out that you and I over the years we've actually sketched out the design for a Doctor Who MMO. Do you remember? Yeah. We have this MMO where we designed it where you you interact not with the doctor necessarily, but with previous adventures that he's actually had. You sort of sit on the sidelines and interact with his companions that

Les Ellis (33:20)
Still have the documents.

Jake Simpson (33:33)
whilst they're in the middle of adventure and scenes that they you know, you don't see them in the actual adventure itself, you interact with them in the side and it's, you know, genesis of the dialects and stuff like that. And you're a time lord that's that's following the doctor's footsteps and yeah. But you never actually directly interact with the doctor himself or herself, as it is now. So

Les Ellis (33:51)
That's right. And there was loads of stuff. If you went back in time and changed something and then went forward it would have changed the environment you're in in that exit. Yeah.

Jake Simpson (33:58)
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's a technical bloody nightmare, but you know, it was with the shards, you know, how the shards would be managed without I don't know. But it was there was some really cool ideas in there. We did have some very cool ideas. One

Les Ellis (34:09)
Time probably impossible to make. No, probably quite easy.

Jake Simpson (34:13)
Well, still expensive though. And these are never cheap, are they? I mean anything you make is Ugh, okay, okay, the scale. I mean, I'm I'm sort of semi-involved in an MMO thing that's happening as a I've been working on and off on it, and I'm off at the moment, but I've got to go back to it the end of this month for just a just a few pieces. Made by one of the biggest names in the MMO industry. I can't talk too much about it because it's not my project to talk about, but having seen the scale of what he's doing and how it's built.

And it's it's definitely what he's doing is the next stage of MMO evolution. There's no question in my mind that this is the next thing, the next big thing. But sheer money needs to be thrown at it to do it. You know, it's it's it's tens of millions of dollars these days. And yeah, it's the gone gone are the days of four guys in a you know, in a in a garage d making a game. Well, you can still do it, I suppose, with Unity, but you're not gonna build doom, you know what mean? You're just not.

Les Ellis (35:06)
No, you need a couple of hundred people in a couple of years to do that. So yeah.

Jake Simpson (35:09)
Right, right. Right. Manchester. So we I have to ask, you know, just 'cause we're here. So yeah, we're we're at the end of Jody Foster's reign at the moment. She's got like two more specials I think next year.

Les Ellis (35:21)
Turkey Post?

Jake Simpson (35:23)
Whittake I just completely blanked. Yeah, never mind. Jody Whitley. We're at the end of her reign, I think it's t like I say, two specials next year, right? And then R T D takes over again as the produ as the show runner and he gets the sixtieth anniversary. Which I think is gonna be really any predictions on who the next doctor's gonna be?

Les Ellis (35:42)
Well, they never really when they start floating around the idea there's gonna be a new doctor, there's always a whole batch of names and it's never any of them.

Jake Simpson (35:51)
I with it was with with David Tennant, his name was definitely floated. But yeah, well that then again there wasn't a lot of time was there? 'Cause it was announced one day that that what's his name had quit and then David Tennant was announced like the next day, wasn't it?

Les Ellis (36:06)
Yeah, well they kind of screwed up the whole Eccleson thing, didn't they? So Yeah. I know it wouldn't surprise me if they went with another female doctor. Might be kinda cool if they do to prove it can be good. Jodie Whitker has suggested someone. She gave a name in an interview the other day. I can't remember who it was.

Jake Simpson (36:09)
Yeah, yeah.

I I wouldn't mind Jody Kummer, she'd be pretty good. I wouldn't mind I mean the the girl in the Christmas special, frankly, was really great. I can think she could have done it. So I'd say someone I'd love to see do it's Hayley Gatwill. You know, she'd be good. maybe someone of colour do it. I'd like to see like Dev Patel from from The Green Knight, I thought. I mean The Green Knight was a bloody awful movie, but the best thing about it was Dev Patel's performance.

Les Ellis (36:35)
Could be interesting.

Jake Simpson (36:50)
He's an absolute he's very engrossing, very engaging, very natural with the camera. He's very I don't know, yeah, I could just see him doing it. I don't know.

Les Ellis (36:59)
It'll

be interesting, you know, but they've they do have a habit of getting great actors in to do these things and really spoiling it. Jody Whitaker is a great actor, Peter Capaldi, fantastic actor. You know, Malcolm Tucker is one of my all time heroes. In fact, one of the guys I model my project management techniques on.

Jake Simpson (37:19)
I'm never gonna I'm never gonna work for you.

Les Ellis (37:23)
And for think of it, doing game development would be the best thing ever.

Jake Simpson (37:27)
It'd be inter he'd be interesting to talk to about that. I've often wanted to ask him, what else could Malcolm Tucker do? What other occupation could he do? I mean at the end of the of the thick of it, doesn't he get basically kicked out anyway?

Les Ellis (37:37)
He does but he comes back. I haven't actually seen the last time. And then they have the whole the sleaze inquiry, the leak inquiry, and he doesn't come out well out of that. But yeah, he comes back at the end of it.

Jake Simpson (37:48)
Okay, I haven't really haven't watched it, so I've watched most of it but I haven't watched them yet. And I understand as well there's new Toast of London as well, which I really want to see. Yeah, I like that. Anyway, right, we should stop talking about T V because you know, there's other things to talk about. What else should we talk about? What other games have you made? Come on. Scott.

Les Ellis (37:55)
Hm. Yeah, that's really good.

What other games have I made? What do you want? Did a load of stuff with Sega. We actually made a Sonic game as well. Which is pretty cool. Yeah, so at one stage we were making a level editor for Sonic One that they were gonna release on a browser on PC that would let you build your own levels and play them. Wow.

We were working closely with Sega Japan on that. It was great. The guy we had working on it was one of the few people outside of Sega Japan who they would allow to work on the Sonic IP. At the time, the rules are different now, but back then they were really strict on who worked on it. But they loved this guy, Steve O'Boyle. So yeah, we were working on a level editor for Sonic, which was great because we just spent all our days making levels just to see what they were like. I don't know if they ever shipped it. the company went down.

Jake Simpson (38:48)
What happened to that?

Les Ellis (38:52)
They had everything, but I think they changed their outlook and they wanted to do this whole sonic portal where you could go there, play all the games, play card games, get wallpapers and all this kind of stuff. But I think Sega just changed their minds and got scared by it. But yeah, it was a fantastic little project. That was really cool. Really

Jake Simpson (39:11)
We don't hear about every day, isn't it?

Les Ellis (39:14)
Yeah. Well, if Sega were never going to talk about it, then definitely not. Yeah. So yeah, loads of stuff around that. I mean, we did I did a crazy taxi game with them. We they basically let us go with any of their IP that we wanted to look at, which was very cool. So where was that? That was at Rockpool and Iidos went to Eclipse and then went over to Ford or Lemon in Bradford. That was a fun one. We did Joe Danger one and two and Joe Danger with the movies, that was really cool. We did a

Interestingly titled game called One Hundred and One Ways to Die, which was basically this teddy bear walking around a level and you could use any of the tools in the level in any of the tools in your inventory to basically brutally murder them in as many spectacular ways as you could. The more brutal the murder, the more points you got. It was great.

Jake Simpson (40:02)
How do you make that a multiplayer game?

Les Ellis (40:05)
That would have been an amazing multiplayer game. Wouldn't it?

Jake Simpson (40:07)
you know, that kind of brutal brutality on a soft toy. Firstly, you know, it says a lot about your mindset. And secondly, I mean did you have like jibs instead of gibs you had like soft soft white stuff coming out of him instead of blood?

Les Ellis (40:21)
No, it was all blood.

Jake Simpson (40:24)
I don't think that works though. With teddy bear you should have had the soft white stuff or whatever, you know.

Les Ellis (40:29)
Yeah, but at the time it was all about core and violence. So we had many, many, many very late nights on that coming up with just we basically spent all our time coming up with ways of brutally murdering things.

Jake Simpson (40:42)
Well, it is called a hundred and one ways to kill something, right? Yeah, it's like

Les Ellis (40:44)
Yeah, and yeah, that kind of left you feeling soiled when you left the office. You're like sat on the train going home looking at people, going, You have no idea of the ways I've just thought of killing you.

Jake Simpson (40:57)
my god. Is that still around? 'Cause that sounds like an IP that's the time has come.

Les Ellis (41:03)
Yeah, I actually noticed it the other day. I was firing up my PS five to download something and I've like filtered everything by number or A to Z and it was the first title on there, it was just Hundred and One Ways to Die and it's like shit, that's still going.

Jake Simpson (41:18)
Can you imagine a a a mod version of that where you've got the instead of a teddy walking around its trunk?

Les Ellis (41:23)
I there is stuff I have wanted to do with Trump in games for a long time that I'm never gonna get to do. But I wanted to do a VR Russian roulette game where you could create your own characters and we'd give everyone the body parts to make Trump and celebrities and religious icons. Religious icons is where I started to struggle to sell it to people. but basically you would play Russian roulette in VR and, you know, blow this character's brains out.

One of those little pet projects that I figure I'm gonna make one day and now I'm into Unreal in a big way, I probably will. But I could just see it, you know, like Jesus and the Pope blowing each other's brains out. I went for the easy religious icons 'cause all they can do is forgive you.

Jake Simpson (42:08)
This is the kind of dangerous mind I know. These are my friends. Isn't that scary? Yeah, I should never have encouraged you.

Les Ellis (42:17)
really should make that game one day, you know, multiplayer it'd great. Hmm. So you're picturing it now, so

Jake Simpson (42:19)
In VR, huh? yeah.

That's the thing, is you know, you immediately that that's the secret of a good pitch is when somebody immediately pitches it in their mind. That is the secret of a good pitch. Hmm. Yeah, okay, maybe one day to make some money first. All right. Okay, I think we're what, we're about fifty minutes or so at this point. So I think we're probably in you we've covered a lot of ground there. So there's a lot been spoken and I just I'm really grateful for you spending your time with me. So thanks very much for helping me out and just talking about this stuff. It's it's a lot of old bollocks, but it's all in it.

Les Ellis (42:52)
it's always good thinking back to this stuff and thinking about the stories that you can't tell that we really should one day, but we can't tell right now. Yeah. It's good thinking back about it. It's been a long career, a lot of fun, a lot of ups, lots of downs, but we're still here and we're still going.

Jake Simpson (43:05)
Yeah, we are. That's that's a strange thing. And we know everybody at this point 'cause we've been around for so long.

Les Ellis (43:09)
That's it. I mean, I keep being told, you know, it's such a huge industry. It's like, Yeah, not right.

Jake Simpson (43:14)
Not that big, yeah. Yeah, I know who you mean. So it's a huge industry for new people coming into it, but there's still that core of the original group around that's still there, you know. Yeah. All right. Well anyway, thanks very much Les for spending time with me. you know and cheers.

Les Ellis (43:27)
Any time, Matt?