Dene Carter

Dene published his first game in 1985, at the age of fifteen, working from his bedroom during school-nights. The game was completed in just two weeks and made him enough money to start his first company 'Electralyte', together with programmer Andrew Bailey. Two hit games followed - Druid and Druid II. Druid was unique in a number of respects; it was the first cooperative two-player computer game, and it was the first UK game to be licensed to Japan. The sequel, Druid II was converted to the Commodore Amiga by a small, inexperienced development team who would eventually become 'Bullfrog'.

Dene left the world of video game development to continue his education at Kingston University where he received a BA in Business Information Technology. During his degree course, Dene worked in one of IBM's AI software development groups which provided experience in intelligence programming.

Once he received his degree, Dene began work at Bullfrog, following his younger brother, Simon, who had joined a year earlier. He quickly became a key member of the Dungeon Keeper team. During the project's roller-coaster development Dene was responsible for the interface design, unique engine lighting features, and sections of the AI code.

Once Keeper was finished Dene helped design the new user interface for Populous 3, and became Keeper's PR front man in Japan. These tasks completed, Dene designed a unique game concept code-named OGEL with which he won the Bullfrog Games' Day - and the right to officially develop the project. He and his brother coded up a demonstration of the game for EA, before leaving to form Big Blue Box Studios. This game is still in development at Bullfrog today.

Dene's thirteen years of experience in the computer game industry has covered machines from the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum to top of the range PC hardware. His lifelong passion for computer games has had some unfortunate side-effects and he can frequently be heard describing the real world in game nomenclature, to his fiancée’s irritation. His favourite games include Nethack, Angband, Mario 64, Zelda (Gameboy), Super Puzzle Fighter 2, CastleVania X and anything by Julian Gollop or Eugene Evans.

Besides games, Dene is obsessed with dark-ambient music and eighties bands. His inspirations include music from the Cold Meat Industry label, Lycia, Bleak, DeadCanDance, Love Spirals Downwards and a long list of obscure performers who can only just be classified as music. His music collection has been known as 'Hell in a friendly CD format'.

With a bewilderingly complex system of beliefs, Dene is Big Blue Box’s moral guidance officer and couples this with an equally fervent need to preach the word that is gaming fun to the masses. Dene’s enthusiasm for the gaming cause is so great that he can often be found spreading the word in some of London's seedier nightspots.

Software Highlights from Credited Titles

Dene Carter's first video game work that SPOnG is aware of is the 1990 title, "Cloud Kingdoms" (C64) as Lead Programmer.

Dene's most recent involvement was as Programmer on the 1998 release "Populous: The Beginning" (PC).

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